What Happened to Peak Oil?

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
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What Happened to Peak Oil?. This article appeared first on CTRM Center.