Amund Prestegard

Retired film-maker

He was born in 1953 close to Oslo. His father was a construction engineer and was assigned to construct NATO oil storage tanks in Cyprus, which gave his young son his first sight of large-scale petroleum. The family returned to Norway and had an interest in photography as a hobby, which their son inherited. He became bored of school at the age of sixteen and found a job as an apprentice in an electronic firm making tape-recorders before taking a holiday in Ibiza where he got a casual job with a film crew that fired his imagination. On returning to Norway, he joined a British film crew as a stand-in and production assistant. Oil production commenced in Norway in 1971, and he found a niche filming offshore operation. In the 1980s, he joined the anti-nuclear weapons movement, making a documentary film of a march from Stockholm to Minsk, which led to other visits to Russia and the Caspian. He was also engaged to shoot films in Costa Rica and the Seychelles before establishing his own company, which made films on art, nature preservation, and similar subjects. He then took up a self-sufficient life with his wife in the rural setting of southern Norway, growing vegetables and collecting firewood in the forest. In 2003, his exposure to the oil industry returned when he was asked to interview a former oil executive. It resulted in a documentary, Peak Oil: Imposed by Nature, which was shown on televisions and marketed as a DVD.  It covers the onset of the decline of oil with its far-reaching consequences on the future of mankind. It led to other documentaries and attendance at ASPO conferences. He has now retired to live in France.

I believe that we are in for a very rough ride. Military power and technological superiority will be the dominating factors determining who will have and who will have not.