Matthew Simmons, energy investment banker, dies at 67

Matthew Simmons, an investment banker who began his career serving the oil industry and later became an advocate for offshore wind energy, died Sunday in Maine. He was 67.

Simmons founded Texas-based Simmons & Co. International, which grew into one of the largest investment banking companies serving the energy industry. He retired last month to devote his energies to The Ocean Energy Institute, a think tank and venture capital fund he founded in Rockland, Maine.

The Ocean Energy Institute said he died of an apparent heart attack.

Simmons wrote the book "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy," which laid out his theory that the world was approaching peak oil production.

-- Associated Press