The takeover of Simmons & Co. by Piper Jaffray Cos. marks the end of an energy industry dealmaker founded by one of the leading champions of the “peak oil” theory, Matthew R. Simmons. Simmons was best known for his claim that the Earth was running out of crude, promoting the idea that world oil reserves were peaking in a 2005 book called “Twilight in the Desert.” He died at 67 in August 2010, on the eve of the U.S. shale boom that sent the nation’s crude output to the highest level in four decades. “The peak oil people were looking at a finite resource,” Sarah Emerson, managing director of ESAI Energy Inc., a consulting company in Wakefield, Massachusetts, said by phone. “Their opponents said this is an industry that’s endlessly innovative. The industry has won big.” On a tour of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry in 2003, Simmons was inspired […]