DAVID STRAHAN
Expert speaker on ‘peak oil’, the oil industry, and their impact on climate change.
Author of The Last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man
David Strahan is an award-winning business correspondent, investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, with many years experience of popularising some of the most difficult and important stories in business and science.
For a decade he reported and produced major investigations for BBC television’s flagship business strand The Money Programme, and for its world-renowned science documentary series Horizon, making highly acclaimed films such as Inside the Enron Scandal and The Moscow Theatre Siege. He is now also the author of a provocative but authoritative book about ‘peak oil’, called The Last Oil Shock.
The Last Oil Shock is a wake-up call to a world sleepwalking towards potential catastrophe: global oil production is set to ‘peak’ and go into terminal decline, almost certainly by 2020 if not very much sooner. And when our daily oil supply begins to shrink, the potential effects could include soaring fuel prices, financial collapse, economic depression and worse. ‘Peak oil’, or the last oil shock, represents a threat far more serious than international terrorism, and just as urgent as global warming.
David Strahan is a lively, witty and popular public speaker, with engagements pending in Britain, Ireland, mainland Europe and the United States. His talks cover the consequences of the oil peak for individual countries and industries – car-making, aviation and agriculture will be especially badly hit – and the measures that must be taken to mitigate its effects. Other industries that would benefit from hearing his analysis are travel, logistics, public transport providers, manufacturing, small business, local government – in fact any and all which depend on a reliable and affordable supply of energy.
The Last Oil Shock has already won high praise from senior oilmen. Former Shell chairman Lord Oxburgh wrote: "This is a well researched and documented book and David Strahan pulls no punches in his analysis of the world's impending energy problems...I commend it as a really good and informative read on a topic that affects us all." Richard Hardman, CBE, former head of Exploration at Amerada Hess and president of the Geological Society, commented: “This book should be compulsory reading for all those in Government in this and every other significant oil consuming country. Take note and avert the greatest crisis since the Second World War.”
After two years’ intensive research, and with his background in television journalism, David Strahan is the ideal speaker to address both the lay audience and the technically sophisticated. For the uninitiated he can explain the issues simply, and for academics and professionals already engaged in the debate – there are many academic and oil industry conferences which address ‘peak oil’ specifically – he can go further and substantially resolve the issue of when these events will happen, through unique insights gained during the course of his research.
The Last Oil Shock explodes many of the myths held dear by governments, oil companies and environmentalists, and in particular shows:
1. Biofuels and hydrogen are utterly inadequate to make good the looming transport fuel deficit
2. How ‘running out’ of oil paradoxically will not help but worsen climate change
3. How traditional economics critically underestimates the importance of energy, and therefore the severity of the last oil shock.
4. Why governments, oil companies, and environmentalists oppose the idea, and why they are wrong
5. How the oil reserves of Middle East OPEC countries are almost certainly far smaller than claimed, meaning the global peak will come sooner rather than later
6. How the actions of oil companies belie their predicament, despite their publicly confident positions
7. How the invasion of Iraq was not ‘all about oil’, but all about peak oil.
These are all areas to which David Strahan can speak in greater depth.