According to Bloomberg News, energy investor and oil industry commentator Matt Simmons has died of an accidental drowning at his home.
Simmons had been frequently mentioned in news reports about the blowout of the Deepwater Horizon. He appeared as a commentator on MSNBC to discuss issues around offshore drilling, and was a proponent of using small nuclear devices to stop the oil flow from the well.
Bloomberg:
Matthew R. Simmons, an energy investment banker and a leading proponent of the “peak oil” theory that claims the Earth is running out of crude, died yesterday.
Simmons, 67, died in an accidental drowning at his home in Maine, local officials said.
Heart disease may have been a contributing factor, according to reports.
Emergency medical workers responded to Simmons’s home a little before 10 p.m. local time yesterday, said John Dietter, a crew chief in North Haven, Maine. The official cause of death is drowning, and he was found in a hot tub, said Tara Harrington, medical associate at Maine’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner.
“It was an accident,” Harrington said today in a telephone interview. She said “heart disease” was listed for the category of “other significant conditions” on the death certificate.
