Weiss believes this climate change initiated a mass migration awayfrom dry-land farming to the creation of irrigated fields along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, allowing the people to build some of the earliest institutions of civilization.
Some analysts say the country's debt problems will, in part, be assumed away by building in privatization revenues and tentative future income fromthe country's as-yet-undeveloped gas fields.
His mission: to spread the word about the virtues of home-grown American fuel made from stuff that normally gets thrown away, or in the case of corn cobs, plowed back into thefields.
The good news for tiny 30-employee Venari is not only that it is part of these two big finds, but that the two fields are just six miles away each other, easily close enough to be produced from a single platform.