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These are interesting and chaotic times and the news is not limited to the markets. Oil is the lifeblood of modern society, but this finite resource may be running out. Globalization has proven to be a fragile enterprise and energy is the one thing that makes our entire global economy work. What will competition for energy bring? A race for oil and gas with China? Unholy alliances with unsavory characters like Chavez, Ahmedinijad and Putin? Are denizens of oil-rich states blessed or cursed? Has our dependence on oil finally become too dangerous to ignore? Do the ways we use energy strengthen our enemies? Are we on the cusp of a new kind of Cold War? One fought not over political or religious ideology like communism of Islam, but against other nations for scarce energy resources? Will political provocations over resources — like the recent Russian/Georgian conflict that threatened to cut off heat and light to Europe —be the way of the future? Will human ingenuity save the day by inventing or perfecting some viable replacement fuel? Come learn about something new from top experts and get your mind buzzing again.
KEYNOTE
 Matt Simmons
An Oil Man Reconsiders the Future of Black Gold
Simmons is Chairman, CEO and Founder of Simmons & Company International, a specialized energy investment banking firm. Since 1974, the firm has guided its broad client base to complete nearly $140 billion in transactions, including 550 merger and acquisitions worth over $97 billion. Today the firm has approximately 135 employees with offices in Houston, Texas and Aberdeen, Scotland, and enjoys a leading role as one of the largest energy investment banking groups in the world.
This gutsy and knowledgeable expert took the industry by storm with the 2005 publication of his rigorously researched book, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (Wiley, 2005). Twilight tells the provocative and largely unknown story of an oil industry that may soon approach a serious, irreversible decline, suggests that it may come far sooner than we think. Simmons’ revelations were particularly compelling given his past experience as an energy advisor to George W. Bush and to Dick Cheney’s controversial energy taskforce. His message is not to be missed.
Mr. Simmons is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Advisory Council of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He also serves on the board of directors of the Associates of Harvard Business School. He is also a founding organizer of the Ocean Energy Institute in Rockland, Maine, which studies the potential to harness tidal energy and Gulf Stream currents.
Mr. Simmons was raised in Kaysville, Utah. He graduated cum laude from the University of Utah and received an M.B.A. with distinction from Harvard Business School. He served on the faculty of Harvard Business School as a research associate for two years and was a doctoral candidate. He is married and has five daughters.
SPEAKERS
 James Howard Kunstler
Social Critic — Author — Journalist
Author of the compelling 2005 study The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century, Kunstler is an insightful social provocateur with ten novels to his credit. The Long Emergency explores the sweeping economic, political and social changes that will result from the end of access to cheap fossil fuels and the impact this will have on the way we live, work, farm and build.
Kunstler first rose to prominence with the publication of The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-made Landscape (1993), a critique of surburbia and hapless urban development trends in the U.S. Geography and its follow-ups Home from Nowhere (1996) and The City in Mind (2002) have become standard reading in architecture and urban planning courses.
In his most recent novel, World Made by Hand (2008), he describes a future more dependent on localized production and agriculture and less reliant on imports.
A seasoned journalist with the power to wake up a crowd, Kunstler has lectured extensively about urban design, energy issues and new economies and frequently covers energy, environmental and economic issues for The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times.
 John Ghazvinian
Expert on Geopolitics of Energy
John Ghazvinian is the author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil (Harcourt, 2007), an expose of the petroleum industry in Africa that received high praise from the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and The Economist. His writing has also been featured in such publications as Newsweek, Slate.com, The Nation, the Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph, and he has been interviewed on more than 50 radio stations in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. His next book will be on Iran.
Mr. Ghazvinian has a doctorate in History from Oxford University and has published papers and given talks and lectures at universities and scholarly institutes in both Britain and America. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and was also a visiting undergraduate and Harvard University. He was raised in London and Los Angeles and currently lives in Philadelphia, where he teaches in the Critical Writing program at the University of Pennsylvania.
 Thomas A. Petrie
Oil-Industry Consultant
Thomas A. Petrie was a co-founder of Petrie Parkman & Co., a Denver and Houston based
energy investment banking firm that merged with Merrill Lynch in December 2006. With
this transaction, he became a Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch and a member of its Executive
Client Coverage Group. He was a former Managing Director and Senior Oil Analyst of The
First Boston Corporation. During his career, Mr. Petrie has been an active advisor on more
than $140 billion of energy related mergers and acquisitions, including many of the largest.
Among its other assignments, Petrie Parkman has advised the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on
its natural gas initiative, the State of Alaska on gas pipeline options, and the U.S. Department
of Energy on the sale of the Elk Hills oilfield.
Mr. Petrie has a Bachelor of Science degree from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and received his Master of Science in Business Administration from Boston University. In December 2005, Mr. Petrie received an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst.
An active member of several industry associations, Mr. Petrie is a past President and member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Petroleum Investment Analysts. He has also served on the Securities and Exchange Commission Advisory Board on Oil and Gas Accounting and has delivered a number of technical papers to the Society of Petroleum Engineers on the subjects of petroleum valuation, merger and acquisition trends, and energy policy. He has been interviewed on numerous occasions by Barron’s and has also appeared on “Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser,” “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer,” CNBC and Fox News. He is also a past Chairman and Director of the District No. 3 Business Conduct Committee of the National Association of Securities Dealers.
Mr. Petrie served for six years as a Trustee of the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Currently, he is a Trustee of the Denver Art Museum, The Colorado Conservation Trust, and serves on the National Advisory Board of the C.M. Russell Museum as well as the Board of Directors of The Gettysburg Foundation.
 Joseph Romm
Alternative Fuels and Climate Expert
Dr. Joseph Romm is a Senior Fellow at American Progress. He oversees the blog ClimateProgress.org, which was named one of Time Magazine's Fifteen Favorite Websites for the Environment in 2007. In December 2008, Romm was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “distinguished service toward a sustainable energy future and for persuasive discourse on why citizens, corporations, and governments should adopt sustainable technologies.” In a March 2009 column in the New York Times, Tom Friedman noted that Dr. Romm is “a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org.”
Dr. Romm served as acting assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy during 1997 and principal deputy assistant secretary from 1995 though 1998. In that capacity, he helped manage the largest program in the world for working with businesses to develop and use advanced transportation and clean energy technologies—$1 billion aimed at energy efficiency, hybrid vehicles, electric batteries, hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, renewable energy, distributed generation, and biofuels. Dr. Romm helped lead the administration's climate technology policy formulation, and initiated, supervised, and publicized a comprehensive technical analysis by five national laboratories of how energy technologies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions at low-cost: Scenarios of U.S. Carbon Reductions.
He is author of Hell and High Water: Global Warming—The Solution and The Politics (William Morrow, January 2007). He is coauthor of the Scientific American article, “Hybrid Vehicles Gain Traction” (April 2006) and author of The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate, named one of the best science and technology books of 2004 by Library Journal.
Romm holds a Ph.D. in physics from M.I.T. and researched his thesis on physical oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_J._Romm
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