Ours is an oil-based economy. Transportation, Agriculture, Plastics, Hi-Tech, ... the majority of our industries & our economy are heavily dependent on oil... EVEN alternative energy sources depend on oil for their production (solar cells, biofuels, ethanol).

The only way to avoid economic collapse is to quickly move towards zero or negative growth, and abstain from the use of all oil-related products/services (which unfortunately, is nearly everything).

Also unfortunately, it is the great flaw of the capitalist system to prioritize "growth", "cost," and the "short-term"... and associating these things as "positive", "beneficial," and "right". This accounts for many people refusing to accept the validity of alternative information. A case in point is the above poster, who actually believes in the accuracy of OPEC's "official figures" and that OPEC wouldn't lie... conveniently forgetting that there are probably NO instances in which OPEC would say that they are running out of reserves & have no spare capacity.

In my opinion, we have just past Peak Oil. (No government is ever going to admit that either, until it is 100% completely obvious.)

Be prepared.

Saudi production laid bare

Summary

1. Cross checking OPEC production and rig count data with International Energy Agency (IEA) and Baker Hughes data shows excellent agreement suggesting there is no reason to doubt the reliability of the OPEC data source.

2. In 2005, Saudi Arabia had 1923 producing wells that on average produced 5740 barrels oil per day per well. This is astonishing high well productivity for an area that has been producing oil for over 50 years.

3. The average well productivity has drifted down from just above 6000 bpd in 1991 to just below 6000 bpd in 2005 (Figure 1). There is no sign of a looming productivity crisis in these data and it would appear that increasing production may be achieved quite simply by drilling more wells.

4. The data provide insight into Saudi Aramco reservoir and resource management in relation to their roll as swing producer. In the past, production has been reduced by retiring production wells and raised again by bringing wells out of retirement. All the while, Aramco have a rolling program of drilling new wells thereby increasing the total number of wells that are available for production.

5. In my post of 7th March I suggested that the most likely explanation for falling Saudi production since April 2006 was voluntary restraint executed through a program of resting wells with high water cut or low pressure. The data presented here contain no evidence of a pending production crisis and voluntary restraint is still considered to be the most likely explanation for recent falls in Saudi production.

Saudi Arabia looks healthy.

No one dislikes car-based culture more than I do, but the peak oil rapture is not going to beam us out of it.

Peak Oil is coming soon. Why? Because we have found no major new sources of supply in over 25 years while half the worlds population (China,India) is now just starting to use oil in their rapidly growing societies.

All the major oil fields are remarkably old. Yes, we do have the tar sand. Yes, we do have the possibility of oil shale. But both involve a lot of energy to get productive oil out. These methods will take decades to solve and bring online meanwhile nobody in this country is really looking at the dire consequences of what Peak Oil really means if we do not prepare. Think of it this way. Our growing economy only grows if more cheap oil is readily available to expand. We will have to rethink how we are going to run our economy when we enter into a time where cheap oil is no longer available.

Bottom line is now is the time to be working hard at finding real solutions for our long term energy needs. Whether peak is going to hit now or a decade from now, I am afraid the consequences of decades without solving our energy needs is going to bite us in the rear.

I think the greatest danger of peak oil is that we would substitute liquified coal, which generates about twice as much co2 per gallon as oil. The coal industry has just begun saying that they could create liquified coal plants that sequester co2 within 10 years - but liquified coal would obviously still emit more co2 than gasoline, because they can't sequester the co2 generated in mining the coal. It must take a significant amount of energy to remove a mountain top and dump it in a nearby valley.

I agree that many people in the peak oil movement are in the long tradition of apocalyptic thinking. They are wrong to think that peak oil will necessarily mean peak production of all fossil fuel (or even of all energy), creating a sort of end of history that forces the world to move back to labor-intensive local economies.

I recall that Aaron Naparstek once wrote that the peak oil movement is to the environmental left as the rapture is to the Christian right, and I think that sums it up very well.

First of all, AD doesn't even mention Savinar and Kunstler in this piece so even if we were to debate their contributions to the energy debate, it's not relevant to criticize AD here or even claim that he is associating Streetsblog with them. (personally I think they both make some good points but go too far in some of their rhetoric).

He does quote Simmons, but he is a very credible alternative viewpoint to the mainstream on peak oil. He is a energy investment banker who wrote a whole book on the subject. Streetsblog is about debating issues that affect our streets and the cheap supply of oil over the last 60 years has been a main contributor to the rise of the automobile on our streets.

There are many scenarios around peak oil, some of them pretty dire. Even the disagreement is merely about whether we will hit the peak very soon or out in 2030 and how steep the decline would be after the peak - no one is really arguing that we will never peak, even Daniel Yergin.

Thanks for a nice reminder about future cheap oil supply being in doubt AD.