Matthew R. Simmons. peakoil.net It was Mike Ruppert who first woke up Desdemona to the Peak Oil story. Des had read the famous Campbell and Laherrère paper,  “The End of Cheap Oil” in 1998, but the issue seemed more distant than global warming and the accelerating destruction of the biosphere. But Mike Ruppert had a doozy of a conspiracy theory that involved Dick Cheney, the oil industry, Peak Oil, and the invasion of Iraq. (Yes, Desdemona has swum the murky waters of conspiracy theory for a few decades.) After Enron cornered the West Coast power market, with political cover provided by the Bush/Cheney co-presidency [pdf], Mike’s idea had particular resonance. Desdemona learned about Matt Simmons in Mike’s From the Wilderness newsletter.   So Desdemona began to frequent sites such as The Oil Drum and ASPO International and eagerly awaited the latest slide decks that Matt posted at his company’s site. But it was Matt’s magnum opus, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, that cemented his reputation as a serious researcher of doom. It’s a highly technical analysis of many papers that have been published in the peer-reviewed petroleum engineering literature, and from these he teases out the inconvenient truths of Saudi oil production. All Desdemona readers should rush out and order a copy.  And suddenly Matt’s gone. Despite going open-loop recently with the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, he’ll be remembered for bringing clarity to an otherwise obscure and confusing topic: the future of world energy production. For this, we owe him debt of gratitude. Thanks, Matt.