The arguments are so one-sided, it’s practically a given that “peak oil” is real and threatening. Or is it? This article examines both sides. It lets readers decide and deals only with supply issues, not crucial environmental ones and the need to develop alternative energy sources. First some background.
The name most associated with “peak oil” is M. King Hubbert. He became the world’s best known geologist when he worked for Houston-based Shell Oil Company from 1943 to 1964. His theory goes something like this. Oil is a finite resource. Peak …

The grab-your-gun-and-head-for-the-hills scenario goes something like this: In the next year or so, world oil production will peak and then promptly plummet, forced down by sinking reserves. While supply crashes, demand will grow. Virtually overnight, fuel will become so dear that farm tractors will go idle, people will go hungry and homes will go cold. Financial markets will collapse and social chaos will follow.
Are you ready?
The doomsday image may sound like the half-baked plot of a Schwarzenegger flick, but thousands of North Americans are taking it seriously enough to stock …

President Bush said Wednesday that the United States has to “get off oil” to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers and declared “it should be obvious” that high demand is creating painful gasoline prices.Bush’s assessment was at odds with that from the 13-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which said before he spoke that it would not put more oil on the global market because crude supplies are plentiful.
OPEC President Chakib Khelil told reporters in Vienna, Austria, that the problems in the U.S. economy were a key factor in the cartel’s …

Underlying nearly all discussions of the oil price is a standard economic concept: supply and demand. It seems so elementary that there is no doubt of it. It says that demand has been growing more rapidly than supply recently and that at some point the world will reach Peak Oil and the price will zoom northwards.
But the reality is more complex. Peak oil is not just a point in time or even a plateau when oil supply becomes unable to expand to meet demand. We need a more nuanced model …

Now they might start sitting up. They wouldn’t listen to the environmentalists or even the geologists. Can governments ignore the capitalists? A report published last week by Citibank, and so far unremarked on by the media, proposes “genuine difficulties” in increasing the production of crude oil, “particularly after 2012″. Though 175 big drilling projects will start in the next four years, “the fear remains that most of this supply will be offset by high levels of decline”.
<em>By George Monbiot – Guardian Unlimited</em>
The oil industry has scoffed at the notion that …