Prominent oil investor Matt Simmons died of a heart attack last night at his home in North Haven, Maine, according to police reports.
The famed energy banker was a prominent proponent of peak oil theory, and most recently got attention for his dire calls about the fate of the Gulf of Mexico.
The debate about the effect of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill -- he thought it would be cataclysmic -- lead him to split with his old firm, Simmons & Co., of which he was the chairman emeritus.
His legacy will no doubt be his work on peak oil and resource scarcity.
http://www.businessinsider.com/matt-simmons-dies-2...
Matthew Simmons, an international oil expert who most recently focused on developing renewable energy from the waters off Maine, died Sunday night of an apparent heart attack, his office is reporting. He was 67.
Simmons founded the Ocean Energy Institute in 2007, hosting a grand opening of its new office last month in Rockland. The goal of the think tank and venture capital fund was to attract investment in research to make Maine a global leader in offshore wind and other ocean energy sources.
According to police reports, Simmons suffered a heart attack while in a hot tub at his home on North Haven. An autopsy is planned for today in Augusta, according to the Knox County Sheriff's Office.
Simmons was a leading energy investment banker, a former energy adviser to President George W. Bush, and author. He wrote the 2005 book “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,†which laid out an argument that the world was approaching peak oil production.