Yamani and the end of an epoch
As the world engaged in reminiscing Ahmed Zaki Yamani's triumphant domination of the energy market, few noticed his latest crusade to warn fossil fuel powers that they needed to prepare for the end of an epoch.
Knowledgeable as he was of geopolitics, the transformative ability of technology, and the limits of a contaminating single source energy system, Yamani had begun directing younger generations into cracking the secrets of sustainability.
To his mind, as the world perfected its economic machinery and technology transformed social life, energy systems mutated into superior stages to reflect progress.
And the signs were ever more prescient: Climate change heralded the fact that the fossil fuel era was reaching its end.
As he brilliantly put it in an interview with the UK newspaper The Guardian: "The Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of stones, and the Oil Age will not end because the world runs out of oil."
His concern was that few of the nations to be most affected by the end of the oil era seemed to be aware of the demands to be placed upon the quality of leadership and the quality of the bureaucracy entrusted with the task to execute a post fossil fuel strategy.
Besides the Emirates and Saudi Arabia -- which have judiciously executed investment strategies to preserve their well-being when oil has to share a space in the worlds energy matrix with significant solar, hydro, wind and waste-to-energy sources. The rest of the oil producing countries seem to believe the oil age to be eternal.
Should one look south, Yamani's fears turn into nightmares. Venezuela -- the country with the largest oil reserves in the world -- has failed to invest oil income in other activities that are of strategic value to the digital economy. Worse it destroyed and brought to an absolute halt its own oil production capability.
This was anticipated by Yamani when he indicated to the Guardian " In Venezuela it is a new government with a new philosophy. When they came they stopped investment in upstream and the capacity of Venezuela came down. Instead of having 800,000 barrels a day surplus, it disappeared. Now it cannot produce any more."
Curiously enough Venezuela's regime claims today that the collapse in oil production is the product of economic sanctions imposed by the United States against its leaders who all happen to be corrupt and many engage with gusto in perpetrating crimes against humanity.
Yamani's interview was posted in 2001 when not only were there were no sanctions, but Western powers were trying to contain the potential Venezuelan originated damages by attempting to engage the regime in conversations and cooperation.
The future indeed seems to be clearer today than at the dawn of this century when Yamani outlined his concerns.
As the United States rose to fossil fuel prominence by virtue of percolating the Permian basin, it will be a determining player in the post fossil fuel era. The basin is a large sedimentary depository located in the Southwestern region of the United States. Cracking and fracking the basin has sent OPEC's market share to about 30% from 70% in the last decade of the past century. And while 80% of reserves lie within the territories of OPEC countries, only the most efficient will preserve their market share.
In the case of Venezuela, as the Wall Street Journal recently indicated, its oil treasure might well be kept under the earth forever should the country fail to spin out of current chaos and seize the opportunities that the marriage of oil with other sources opens for development.