A Quote by Gwyn Morgan
Peter Tertzakian's analysis of world oil is a fascinating reminder that history often foretells the major turning points of the future.
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We should quit using phrases like 'turning points' and 'tipping points.' There's been multiple turning points, multiple tipping points.
In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden source in individuals.
In real life turning points are sneaky. They pass by unlabeled and unheeded. Opportunities are missed, catastrophes unwittingly celebrated. Turning points are only uncovered later, by historians who seek to bring order to a lifetime of tangled moments.
Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, it is right in the midst of the major energy reserves in the world. Its been a primary goal of US policy since World War II to control what the State Department called "a stupendous source of strategic power" and one of the greatest material prizes in history.
What fascinates me are the turning points where history could have been different.
Saudi Arabian oil production is at or very near its peak sustainable volume (if it did not, in fact peak almost 25 years ago), and is likely to go into decline in the very foreseeable future. There is only a small probability that Saudi Arabia will ever deliver the quantities of petroleum that are assigned to it in all the major forecasts of world oil production and consumption.
By curious accident of history and geography, the world's major energy resources are located pretty much in Shiite regions. They're a minority in the Middle East, but they happen to be where the oil is, right around the northern part of the Gulf.
Winning the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War II were the turning points in our history, the sine qua non of our forward progress.
I start with the history, and I ask myself, 'What are the great turning points? What are the big dramatic scenes that are essential to telling the story?'
I try to keep in mind Oscar Wilde's comment that "saints always have a past and sinners always have a future," so no investment should be ruled out simply on the basis of past history. We focus on liquidation analysis and liquidation analysis alone.
I was a history major at Princeton University; I took exams in war and diplomacy, and I find those things very fascinating.
There's a huge misconception that it's all about the oil, and the truth is there's actually not much oil left in Abyei. The misperception arose because when the peace agreement was signed in 2005, Abyei accounted for a quarter of Sudan's oil production. Since then, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague defined major oil fields to lie outside Abyei. They're in the north now, not even up for grabs, and they account for one percent of the oil in Sudan. The idea that it's "oil-rich Abyei" is out of date.
The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.
Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.
Not often, but every once in a while, God brings us to a major turning point — a great crossroads in our life.
My family always comes first. My world revolves around my husband, Peter, our daughter, Victoria, and our son, William, but not necessarily in that order. Then, it's this fascinating world of publishing that devours most of my days and many nights.
