The Uintah Conference Center was a full house for the Uintah Basin Energy Summit on Thursday. Keynote speaker Robert Rapier made his case for the strength of oil and gas as an energy source into the future. Rapier is the author of
Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil
. He is also the Chief Investment Strategist for Energy Strategist and makes regular media appearances on energy and sustainability all while writing as an energy industry columnist. Rapier outlined lessons learned from the peak oil panic after OPEC flooded the market stating that perception influence prices, high prices spur innovation and production and that OPEC maintains immense market power. While perception may exist that the oil and gas industry is on its way out, Rapier emphasized that global crude demand has grown annually for 35 years and there are no relevant reasons to believe that will die out anytime soon. Rapier claimed it is impossible for electric vehicles to make much of an effect on the oil and gas industry in the coming decades stating that petroleum has a 92 percent share of the U.S. transportation market and that kind of a hold will be difficult to replace.
