About a decade ago, the peak oil concept was very popular. The argument went that oil was a finite resource and that the peak output level and decline was shortly to arrive as demand exceeded supply. A number of people even expanded on this basically accusing the Saudis of ‘lying’ about their reserves and painting a very dim picture of future supply/demand. At the time, I argued and wrote that this peak oil theory was simply nonsense as it neglected two very important things – economics and human ingenuity. On the former point, the peak of oil recovery will show a relationship to the price of oil and on the second, we humans have a habit of being opportunistic and inventive so that I expected new recovery methods and new plays to be found offsetting and delaying any potential peak for an unlimited amount of time into the future. I was even laughed at for my views. For example in his book The Entropy of Capitalism, Robert Biel writes the following…”It is amusing to observe a leading defender of energy hedging strongly affirm the existence of an energy crisis while denying the reality of peak oil (Vasey, 2005) his vested
Continue reading What Happened to Peak Oil?. This article appeared first on CTRM Center.