BELLINGHAM — Delta Airlines limited services here recently because of gas prices.

Whatcom County officials voted down a new, larger Lummi Island ferry because it would have cost another $500,000 for fuel.

Area residents are feeling the dollar crunch at the gas pumps, too.

Get the picture? City Council member Jack Weiss hopes so.

Monday night Weiss and other council members will discuss the creation of a local peak oil task force that will study how ever-increasing fuel prices and the potential for decreasing oil production will affect the local economy, government and the public.

THE PLAN

“I guess I see the handwriting on the wall about what is happening in our country in the overall global outlook of what’s going on with energy,” Weiss said of why he has proposed creating the task force.

He believes its goals would be two fold. First would be creating educational programs for the public and government; second would be creating some form of emergency plan so local governments are prepared if there is a gas shortage. Weiss said that plan would help ensure the government is better off than when the federal government responded to Hurricane Katrina.

PEAK OIL

People have debated when or if oil supplies may be lost since the 1950s, when geoscientist M. King Hubbert theorized that the U.S. would peak in oil production between 1965 and 1970. His prediction turned out to be true.

But some still debate what Hubbert’s theory on peak oil means for global supplies. John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., the U.S. division of Royal Dutch Shell, gave an interview to CNN this week in which he acknowledged that conventional oil supplies may run out within the next decade. But he stressed that unconventional supplies, such as oil sands in Alberta, Canada, are abundant, and there are still opportunities for oil production in America that aren’t currently allowed, such as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

This week at a press conference President Bush chastised Congress for continuing to block such supplies.

Weiss sees a sort of domino effect happening that will eventually hit locals: Prices continue to rise, or a gasoline shortage occurs like in the mid- 1970s, and low-income residents then have to decide between fueling a vehicle, paying increased heating bills or paying rent. Then they seek help from social service agencies, which could fail if the public goes to them en masse.

The city of Portland, Ore., had a yearlong peak oil task force that issued a report in 2007 calling for reducing gasoline consumption by 50 percent by 2032, according to information on the city’s Office of Sustainable Development. Portland City Council members adopted that goal.

“The Task Force found that Portland residents, businesses and institutions spend more than $650 million for gasoline and natural gas each year. Most of this sum leaves the community, while investments in public transportation infrastructure, energy efficiency and dense urban housing create jobs and keep dollars in local circulation,” the task force stated in a press release.

INDUSTRY RESPONSE

Whatcom County Councilman Carl Weimer doesn’t think Weiss is being too dramatic.

Weimer is also the executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, the national nonprofit oil and natural gas pipeline watchdog group created after the 1999 Olympic Pipe Line explosion in Bellingham.

Several weeks ago Weimer was speaking with the American Petroleum Institute central steering committee — basically the bigwigs of the oil industry — and he asked them about peak oil.

“When you talk about peak oil in town here, people haven’t thought about it much and the reaction is ‘Oh that’s not going to happen,’ ” Weimer said. “But when you talk about it in a room full of oil company presidents, they don’t argue with you.”

Behind closed doors oil executives may be agreeable, but John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute, said there is a misunderstanding in terms of when peak oil might hit.

Felmy said part of the issue is that gasoline is so expensive to produce right now. To get around that, the nation needs more refinery capacity, Felmy said. And if sources of oil in America were opened up that would help reduce the cost of gasoline, he said.

“In terms of resources available the arguments that we’re going to be near a peak simply don’t hold water,” he said.

For Weiss, the task force can only help educate the public about the issues of peak oil.

“There really needs to be an overall educational effort on this,” he said. “We’re talking about really kind of the wellbeing of the entire community.”