The Capital Region Energy Forum and The College of Saint Rose will present a symposium on the implications of limited oil supply and growing worldwide demand.

“The Oil Factor: The Economic and Financial Implications of Limited Supply and Expanding Demand” will be held at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 1, in The College of Saint Rose Saint Joseph Hall Auditorium, 985 Madison Ave., Albany. The symposium is free and open to the public.

Four dollars per gallon for gas, $4.50 per gallon for heating oil? Global demand for oil may soon exceed supply. Americans now have to compete for energy. Meanwhile, capital is constrained the world over.

The symposium’s featured speaker will be Dr. Stephen Leeb, a leading authority on the stock market, energy trends and personal finance. His most recent book, The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel (Broadway Books, 2006), is a New York Times best seller.

Additional speakers will include Dr. Khalid Mehtabdin, professor of economics at The College of Saint Rose, and Dr. Bradley G. Lewis, professor of economics at Union College. Area talk show host Dr. Joseph C. Parisi will serve as moderator.

The Oct. 1 symposium is designed to draw even greater attention to the seriousness of the energy challenges facing the world, the nation and New York and to explore and assess the technological and policy implications. The goal is to raise awareness of the problems posed by the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels in general and oil in particular, provide an understanding of the many alternatives to oil for transportation and other vital processes and promote public discussion on development of sensible energy policies at the local, state and federal levels.

For more information, contact Lisa Haley Thomson or Benjamin Marvin Phone at St. Rose, at 518-454-5102 or marvinb@strose.edu; or Ansi Vallens at the Capital Region Energy Forum, at 518-392-4238 or ansisvallens@fairpoint.net.