PALM SPRINGS, CA — Paul Roberts, author of "The End of Oil," said on March 4 that currently the world is burning 3 barrels of oil for every 1 new barrel of oil discovered, a trend that cannot be long sustained. Speaking at the CALSTART Clean Heavy-Duty Vehicle Conference last week, Roberts said that "new oil" is hard to find — having peaked in 1962 — and that each year now we are finding less new oil than we consume. Referencing the Iraq war, he said that "the (oil) market doesn't care why we're at war, it only cares about the lack of stability in a region where the oil is." He said that oil prices remain high because of this kind of geo-political instability, and that the financial markets expected the U.S. to stabilize the situation in Iraq. U.S. "failure" to stabilize the region has kept oil prices high.