David Strahan – Page 19 – write first draft

Why BP and Shell are bound to merge

July 15, 2007 By David StrahanNo Comments

By David Strahan. First published in the The Independent on Sunday, 15 July 2007. BP and Shell are finally about to merge. That’s if you believe the tittle-tattle in the Square Mile. Of course rumours that the two giant companies might wed are hardly new and have been the stuff of bankers’ fevered imagination for years. But there is now an increasingly compelling case why the two energy groups should be integrated. (more…)...

Why Iraq was all about peak oil

June 26, 2007 By David Strahan3 Comments

By David Strahan. First published in the Guardian, 26 June 2007. Even as one of the principal architects of the Iraq war washes his hands of the whole bloody mess there is still only a remarkably vague understanding of the real reason behind the invasion. (more…)...

Exxon boss calls end of non-OPEC growth by 2010

June 22, 2007March 19, 2018 By David Strahan1 Comment

Big beasts of the oil jungle don’t come much bigger than Rex Tillerson, in London last week to give a speech at Chatham House. Usually at such events the bigger the beast the duller the platitudes, but during questions afterwards the CEO of ExxonMobil made some significant remarks that underscored the tightness of oil supply outlook, and effectively predicted the end of non-OPEC oil production growth by 2010. (more…)...

Why the Middle East matters

June 1, 2007 By David StrahanNo Comments

Letter to Prospect, June 2007. Edward Luttwak’s argument that the Middle East doesn’t matter (The Middle of Nowhere, Prospect, May 2007) is bunk. While some of his points about the chronic Israel-Palestine problem ring horribly true, his willful denial of the real significance of the wider region, and of Iran in particular, is astonishing. To coin a phrase, it’s the oil, stupid. (more…)...

What Stern really got wrong

May 16, 2007 By David Strahan1 Comment

By David Strahan. First published in Prospect, 16 May 2007 In one sense Stern’s conclusions were entirely predictable. He set out to answer the same brutally simple question posed by Dick Turpin: your money or your life. And now that climate change so clearly has a pistol at the head of our species, there could only be one answer – irrespective of cost. (more…)...

Why it isn’t over yet for Lord Browne

May 6, 2007 By David StrahanNo Comments

By David Strahan. First published in the Independent on Sunday, 6 May 2007. Is it possible that Lord Browne’s humiliation is not yet complete? It may be hard to credit in a week when he was forced to resign with immediate effect – at a personal cost of £15m – after lying in a witness statement about a lover he met through a male escort agency. (more…)...

Who’s afraid of oil depletion?

April 5, 2007 By David Strahan5 Comments

By David Strahan. First published in the Ecologist, April 2007. What is it about climate change campaigners and peak oil – the two words you almost never hear them utter? The idea that global oil production will soon go into terminal decline ought to be a godsend; it makes the kinds of things they have been lobbying for all the more urgent and compelling. Yet most of the big NGOs continue studiously to ignore the idea. (more…)...