The low gas prices today are a combination of factors. Increased US production is one, but these are hard to extract, dirty, fast-depleting fields that require a lot more refining and money to produce.  Their effect is temporary at best.  OPEC countries are also keeping production up, in part to try to undercut and drive out some of the more expensive shale producers.  That's a long term strategy whose endgame is higher prices.  More efficient vehicles and a softening Chinese economy has cut demand as well.  The trick is that relatively small moves in production and demand can have a huge influence on prices.  Slight excess supply leads to a crash in prices whereas a slight shortage causes huge price increases.  Unfortunately instead of using demand destruction as an opportunity to invest in alternative fuels and rethink transportation priorities, we in the US anyway are squandering it on more driving and yet larger vehicles again, as the recent surge in VMT numbers is showing.  That's not a path to future prosperity but volatility.  Hopefully advances in electric vehicles and continued interest in more compact city living will be enough to continue a positive trajectory in spite of backwards Federal policy and string pulling by the likes of the Koch family and other oil interests. 

The move to electric cars, which will probably be sooner in China, is going to have a serious mitigating effect.

And yet prices at the pump have been stable or declining for a long while now.

 

Fluctuating oil prices, including extended of declining oil prices are not and never have been at odds with Peak Oil.  Over a decade ago, the Peak Oil crowd explained this is one of the things that would occur. 

 

That aside, your argument doesn't change the fact that discovery of new sources of oil-- in terms of barrels found-- vs. barrels produced (on a global scale) have been lagging for decades.  This is exactly Peak Oil.  Just facts.  Nothing alarmist. No crying wolf either despite your protestations and those of the industry and media to the contrary. 

 

 

 

The low gas prices today are a combination of factors. Increased US production is one, but these are hard to extract, dirty, fast-depleting fields that require a lot more refining and money to produce.  Their effect is temporary at best.  OPEC countries are also keeping production up, in part to try to undercut and drive out some of the more expensive shale producers.  That's a long term strategy whose endgame is higher prices.  More efficient vehicles and a softening Chinese economy has cut demand as well.  The trick is that relatively small moves in production and demand can have a huge influence on prices.  Slight excess supply leads to a crash in prices whereas a slight shortage causes huge price increases.  Unfortunately instead of using demand destruction as an opportunity to invest in alternative fuels and rethink transportation priorities, we in the US anyway are squandering it on more driving and yet larger vehicles again, as the recent surge in VMT numbers is showing.  That's not a path to future prosperity but volatility.  Hopefully advances in electric vehicles and continued interest in more compact city living will be enough to continue a positive trajectory in spite of backwards Federal policy and string pulling by the likes of the Koch family and other oil interests. 

 

You're on the right track.  Price volatility, demand destruction when prices get too high, etc.  These are among the things that happen when you hit Peak Oil.  It doesn't negate it, though, as Gramarye seems to think it does. 

 

OPEC not cutting production is a bit more theater than anything else.  OPEC has never been good at sticking to production cuts.

 

 

And yet prices at the pump have been stable or declining for a long while now.

 

Fluctuating oil prices, including extended of declining oil prices are not and never have been at odds with Peak Oil.  Over a decade ago, the Peak Oil crowd explained this is one of the things that would occur. 

 

That aside, your argument doesn't change the fact that discovery of new sources of oil-- in terms of barrels found-- vs. barrels produced (on a global scale) have been lagging for decades.  This is exactly Peak Oil.  Just facts.  Nothing alarmist. No crying wolf either despite your protestations and those of the industry and media to the contrary.

 

Then I have to ask, what is the point of your argument?  If your argument says nothing about pricing or fuel affordability (which subsumes the concept of shortages), and is consistent with years-long periods of ready availability of oil at affordable prices, easily long enough to allow alternative energy technologies to mature at current technological growth rates, then of what practical relevance is it?  And would you then concede that there is no peak-oil-based reason (leave climate change aside, as I understand that's a separate issue) to legally restrict exploration, extraction, or shipping of fossil fuels, to ban pipelines, and so forth, since those would simply be voluntary wastes of investors' money to construct infrastructure for fields that you believe will deplete quickly?  And that peak oil supplies no real reason to be concerned with the increase in VMT and vehicle size prompted by the extended lull we've experienced for years now?

 

If the point is simply that production (or discovery, not sure which one you even make central to your thesis) cannot increase indefinitely for the next thousand years, then by all means, I won't argue it.  But I think it's disingenuous at best to suggest that peak oil is nothing more than that and doesn't also intend to imply frightening things about the implications of that fact, implications which have been thoroughly contradicted by events in the last several years.

...Events in the last several years.

 

Peak oil is a long-term event. No one knows when the actual peak is, but it doesn't really matter. If projections are correct, global oil production will definitely be in decline by 2030.

 

 

https://www.rt.com/business/360988-opec-deal-limit-oil/

 

Oil soars as OPEC reaches deal to limit production first time in 8 years

 

Here's an interesting graph:

 

 

This is a familiar shape that seems to show up in lots of places. Note that:

 

• From 1900 to 1970, growth follows an exponential shape, with a major anomaly at WWII. The highest sustained rate of growth occurred between 1948 and 1970.
  
• Starting about 1970, the graph still shows growth, but at a slower rate of growth. There are some periods of decline, one of which lasted a decade from 1998 to 2008.
  
• The entire graph could be the front half of a bell curve, but it is too early to tell if it will continue to increase, level off, or decline.
  

 

So, what is this graph? It's not about oil, specifically, but its related, because it includes travel patterns.

 

This graph is the number of visitors to the United States National Parks.

By the way, the most popular National Park is the Great Smokey Mountains. The second most popular is the Grand Canyon.

The automobile lobby pushed hard for the national parks.  If you stop at the overlooks on Newfound Gap Rd. through the Smokey Mountains, you will see that they blatantly and with a wink announce this on the informational panels.  It's as if the Smokey Mountains staff is apologizing to everyone for how car and motorcycle-infested the park is. 

 

I biked from Gatlinburg up that climb twice last year, once in the early spring, when I had the place mostly to myself, and again in June or July, when the place was overrun with fat tourists.  It's really upsetting getting honked at and being passed by cars with kids glued to their phones while you're motoring up the side of the mountain range under your own power. 

 

 

The last two episodes of Ken Burns' "National Parks" documentaries touch on how intertwined the car was with the development of national parks. The relationship went both ways, the parks wanted as many visitors per year as possible and prior to the personal automobile they were pretty much out of reach for the vast majority of Americans. They quickly started to see the side effects, though, but a bit too late as they had already invested so much into scenic routes.

...Events in the last several years.

 

Peak oil is a long-term event. No one knows when the actual peak is, but it doesn't really matter. If projections are correct, global oil production will definitely be in decline by 2030.

 

 

 

I'm reminded of P. J. O'Rourke's observation that running out of whale oil was a big non event.

 

 

 

 

The Whaling industry in the United States lasted about 100 years and peaked about 1850, with 640 whaling ships in service. Whaling was the fifth largest economic sector at the time. The following graph shows the rise and fall of the whaling industry in the United States.

 

 

As you can see, whaling followed an exponential growth pattern until 1840. Who could have predicted at that time that the industry would suffer exponential decay just 30 years later?

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/the-spectacular-rise-and-fall-of-us-whaling-an-innovation-story/253355/

That's fine.  But peak oil as a hypothesis for why investments in fossil fuel companies aren't going to be good long-term performers is one thing; peak oil as a guide to national policy is another.

The last two episodes of Ken Burns' "National Parks" documentaries touch on how intertwined the car was with the development of national parks. The relationship went both ways, the parks wanted as many visitors per year as possible and prior to the personal automobile they were pretty much out of reach for the vast majority of Americans. They quickly started to see the side effects, though, but a bit too late as they had already invested so much into scenic routes.

 

I lived in Knoxville for four years and so read a lot about the history of the Smokey Mountains park.  Probably the most interesting part of its history is that its location is pretty arbitrary.  Whereas Yosemite was centered around its namesake valley, there was simply a general concept for a park in Tennessee and North Carolina and in a parallel universe a park of a similar size exists that doesn't overlap the protected area of our planet's park. 

 

I think the thing we narrowly missed with the Smokey Mountain park is that all of the controversy over kicking out the families who farmed Cade's Cove prevented that valley from becoming overrun with auto-oriented development like Pigeon Forge.  Those poor families would not have been able to resist the temptation to sell out and where a bucolic but tourist-infested valley now exists would instead be a loud, wildly illuminated tourist-infested valley. 

 

That's fine.  But peak oil as a hypothesis for why investments in fossil fuel companies aren't going to be good long-term performers is one thing; peak oil as a guide to national policy is another.

 

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but peak oil is a hypothesis that the long-term shape of the oil extraction curve is more or less bell-shaped, with the first half in growth and the second half in decline. The implication is that at some point in the future, the rate of oil extraction is going to be in irreversible decline when we realize that we are on the back half of the bell curve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

70% of Americans oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge according to a Yale poll. https://t.co/30xxmUknRo

I have no principled objection to it, though I'm surprised that this is even still an issue considering the collapse in oil prices that has lasted almost a decade now.  In 2007, gasoline in Canton, where I worked at the time, was north of $4/gal.  In the Great Recession, it dropped to $1.55.  (I remember that because I bought oil stocks when I saw that on my way to work, thinking that would never be sustainable regardless of economic collapse.)  Then it rebounded a little bit, then collapsed again with the fracking boom and I saw it at $1.40 just last year.  Now it's back into the mid-$2 range.  That still shouldn't be enough to justify even really wanting to go through all the time and expense of extracting north of the Arctic Circle.  Not when we're producing a tremendous amount in the lower 48.

Unless the industry's expectation is that the price/supply won't stay at current levels for long.

Is the industry really pushing for this so they can drill right now, or do they want future rights?  And are we assuming that this administration is allowing this drilling in response to real economic planning, or is this a culture-wars, "liberal tears" victory for him in the eyes of his base?

Full disclosure - I’m a contract engineeer for Shell

 

This article has some interesting nuggets about future demand.  From what I have heard, we are about 3 years away from “Peak Gasoline” defines as the peak demand for gasoline, is within the next 5 years.

 

http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2018/01/24/royal-dutch-shell-lower-oil-prices/?source=dam

Speculawyer

@speculawyer

  15h15 hours ago

Brent oil price at new 3 year high.  Yee-haw.  Enjoy filling up your pick-ups a with the new high gasoline prices courtesy of the orange Birther Boy's decision to let Iran build a nuclear bomb.  #MAGA #TCOT #Winning

Heh.  If anything, this will just get idle fracking wells back into production again.

 

That said, it's probably also helping the resale value of my Nissan LEAF.  When gas was down to $1.60/g, I didn't have anywhere near the same cost advantage.

^^ I'm not sure who it is Tweeting that nonsense, but the actual cause for the recent gradual but persistent price rise is this:

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-opec-meeting/opec-russia-agree-oil-cut-extension-to-end-of-2018-idUSKBN1DU0WW

 

It's all the result of a tedious effort to get the price of oil right at the point where OPEC maximizes profit while making sure North American fracking isn't profitable.

 

Cross-posted in the Trump thread....

 

Agent Orange just saved the Russian economy

 

Cross-posted in the Trump thread....

 

Agent Orange just saved the Russian economy

 

 

Venezuela too!  Also the US energy sector.  How much influence do they have?  I would guess a lot.

Still dropping all of your cars, Ford?

Cross-posted in the Trump thread....

 

Agent Orange just saved the Russian economy

 

 

Venezuela too!  Also the US energy sector.  How much influence do they have?  I would guess a lot.

 

That's rather short-term thinking to suggest that higher oil prices will save the Russian or Venezuelan economies, or U.S. or other private oil companies.

 

Trump just made the value proposition of electric cars considerably stronger.  In the short term, there isn't enough production of such vehicles to meaningfully respond to that new demand (plus this spike might only be temporary).  In the medium term, though, assuming the price of gas stays up around $3/gal in Ohio (more in California and other coastal markets now) for some time to come again, the incentives for moving away from fossil fuel propulsion just got--no pun intended--recharged.

It will certainly increase the price of existing Teslas

That's rather short-term thinking to suggest that higher oil princes will save the Russian or Venezuelan economies, or U.S. or other private oil companies.

 

You're right.  Just pointing out how so many interests are intertwined.  Could have included places like Norway too.  There's also an extent to which we don't necessarily want to wreck an enemy's economy, as it could make them more desperate and more hateful toward us.  Our sanctions against Russia haven't weakened Putin, they've bolstered him.

From a friend....

 

Long but good read confirms the mainstream US media rarely tells us anything that really matters about US foreign policy.  There's a lot more behind Venezuela's troubles than we're told, and like the Middle East, the only reason we've ever given a damn about the country is oil, which is, as always, the driver behind the BS propaganda we're fed:

 

Venezuela’s collapse is a window into how the Oil Age will unravel

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/venezuelas-collapse-is-a-window-into-how-the-oil-age-will-unravel-f80aadff7786

FWIW.....

 

Government Agency Warns Global Oil Industry Is on the Brink of a Meltdown

We are not running out of oil, but it's becoming uneconomical to exploit it—another reason we need to move to renewables as quickly as possible.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8848g5/government-agency-warns-global-oil-industry-is-on-the-brink-of-a-meltdown

Quote

"I'm done with fossil fuels ... they're just done," [CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer] said then. "You're seeing divestiture by a lot of different funds. It's going to be a parade. It's going to be a parade that says, 'Look, these are tobacco and we're not going to own them.'"

 

Cramer said Monday he has taken heat for his stance in recent days, but he was not backing down from it.

 

Fossil fuel stocks, he said, "feel like a slowly melting ice cube, a wasting asset that will have down revenues unless the price of crude jumps and stays higher."

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/jim-cramer-the-profit-in-oil-and-gas-stocks-is-drying-up.html

4 hours ago, KJP said:

FWIW.....

 

Government Agency Warns Global Oil Industry Is on the Brink of a Meltdown

We are not running out of oil, but it's becoming uneconomical to exploit it—another reason we need to move to renewables as quickly as possible.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8848g5/government-agency-warns-global-oil-industry-is-on-the-brink-of-a-meltdown

 

I was just about to post this...

 

 

 

From that article:

 

The current economic system cannot sustain oil prices above $100 a barrel and keep growing, while producers for most new fields cannot sustain profits at prices as low as $45 a barrel without more borrowing.

 

According to Dr. Michaux, the global economy is therefore caught between a rock and a hard place. “Oil prices will be held low for a time,” he explained. “The problem is all consumers at all scales in all sectors are saturated with debt. Costs are going up, while the ability to generate wealth is contracting.”

 

This doesn't seem like an unsolvable quandary, assuming these numbers are correct (and they look reasonable enough that I'll assume they are for the sake of argument, though I'm no oil industry expert).  That still leaves a $55 range between $45/barrel and $100/barrel in which there is room for the companies to have sustainable profits without sparking another Great Recession.  I'm sure that the $2.11/gallon gasoline I saw at the pump last week flows from unsustainably low oil prices and people shouldn't bet on seeing prices like that for the next decade.  But that doesn't mean that it needs to get back to $4/gal in order for the industry to survive.

On 2/12/2006 at 11:12 PM, KJP said:

Did we just crest the oil peak?

 

 

^I’m not sure whether you think that is high or low.  In the Cleveland area it ranges from $1.06 to $2.39 for gas.  It’ll be sub 1.00 in a week. 

Edited March 27, 20205 yr by audidave

 

Exxon kicked off the Dow 30:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/exxon-out-salesforce-amgen-honeywell-added-to-dow-because-of-apple-stock-split-2020-08-24?mod=home-page

45 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

Exxon kicked off the Dow 30:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/exxon-out-salesforce-amgen-honeywell-added-to-dow-because-of-apple-stock-split-2020-08-24?mod=home-page

Interestingly, this move will make P&G the longest tenured company on the Dow. It's been listed there since 1932! 

21 minutes ago, OliverHazardPerry said:

Interestingly, this move will make P&G the longest tenured company on the Dow. It's been listed there since 1932! 

 

My grandmother worked there from 1943 (right after she graduated from high school) until 1949 when she got married.  Yes, they had an employee stock purchase plan back then.  She and my grandfather went to a financial planner in 1955 and he advised them to sell the stock so they did.  She's still alive and has almost no money.  

The projects I am working on for Shell in the Gulf of Mexico hit break even at $27 a barrel.  If we applied some automotive discipline, we could get that down to $15?

 

https://reports.shell.com/investors-handbook/2018/upstream/deep-water.html

https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/09/12/3-energy-stocks-that-could-go-bankrupt-in-2020/

 

3 Energy Stocks That Could Go Bankrupt in 2020

 

=======================================

 

That was published about three weeks ago; we'll see about the other two, TransOcean and Nabors, but one of those three has already fallen:

 

https://www.abi.org/newsroom/bankruptcy-headlines/oasis-petroleum-files-for-bankruptcy-after-shale-downturn

 

Oasis Petroleum Inc. filed for chapter 11 protection today, the latest U.S. shale producer to seek court-aided restructuring as the energy industry reels from an unprecedented crash in oil prices caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported.

 

=======================================

 

The real issue at this point is when, or maybe even if, we'll even see oil prices recover from the crash caused by the pandemic.  The EV revolution is beginning to pick up steam and the age of the internal combustion engine is clearly drawing to a close--not closed yet, but if it's 10-15 years away and 2-3 of those years are going to be depressed by the pandemic (and subsequent culture and lifestyle changes regarding the acceptability of working from home), that's a significant portion of the remaining span before crude oil goes the way of whale oil, at least as a fuel source.  And reserves are sufficient to supply non-fuel demand (polymers, asphalt, pharmaceuticals/cosmetics, lubricants) for generations.

1 hour ago, Gramarye said:

That was published about three weeks ago; we'll see about the other two, TransOcean and Nabors, but one of those three has already fallen:

 

https://www.abi.org/newsroom/bankruptcy-headlines/oasis-petroleum-files-for-bankruptcy-after-shale-downturn

 

Oasis Petroleum Inc. filed for chapter 11 protection today, the latest U.S. shale producer to seek court-aided restructuring as the energy industry reels from an unprecedented crash in oil prices caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported.

 

 

This is the stock I made about $9,000 on back in May.  It was impossible to get news on it so I never jumped back in.   

On 2/6/2017 at 8:11 PM, Ram23 said:

The last two episodes of Ken Burns' "National Parks" documentaries touch on how intertwined the car was with the development of national parks. The relationship went both ways, the parks wanted as many visitors per year as possible and prior to the personal automobile they were pretty much out of reach for the vast majority of Americans. They quickly started to see the side effects, though, but a bit too late as they had already invested so much into scenic routes.

The railroads had a hand in it before the auto industry.  Read:  Trains of Discovery:  Railroads and the Legacy of the National Parks by Alfred Runte.   Did Burns cover this? 

On 9/18/2016 at 7:37 PM, Eigth and State said:

 

Peak oil is a long-term event. No one knows when the actual peak is, but it doesn't really matter. If projections are correct, global oil production will definitely be in decline by 2030.

 

 

 

Peak oil has always been about the flow rate of conventional oil supplies.  Conventional oil = the cheap easy oil that requires only vertical wells in formations that produce it prolifically.  These are the giant and super-giant, legacy oil fields in highly permeable formations, with a high energy return on energy invested, that are responsible for 80% of global oil production, and the production in which (globally speaking) is declining by about 4% per year.   Conventional oil is not tar sands oil.  It's not deep-water oil.  It does not require horizontal drilling and fracking (To illustrate:   A single well in Saudi Arabia can produce 12,000 bbl/day.  One well in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota  produces about 130 bbl/day and it requires horizontal drilling and fracking).  Production of conventional  oil peaked globally roughly a dozen to 15 years ago.  All the horizontal fracking that has been done in the past decade, the deep-water oil drilling that brought us the BP Horizon disaster, the development of the Canadian tar sands are the result of peak oil.

 

On 2/7/2017 at 7:33 AM, E Rocc said:

 

I'm reminded of P. J. O'Rourke's observation that running out of whale oil was a big non event.

But, at the time we were able to switch to huge amounts of then untapped petroleum.  There is no comparably energy dense source to switch to now, unless we can figure out fusion, but ever since I was a kid, fusion power has always been 30-years away, and it still is.  Sidenote:  peak oil has never been about "running out".  The peak oil crowd, repeatedly and in vain and for more than a decade tried to explain this, but it never sunk in with most people, least of all the media.  

3 minutes ago, gildone said:

Sidenote:  peak oil has never been about "running out".  The peak oil crowd, repeatedly and in vain and for more than a decade tried to explain this, but it never sunk in with most people, least of all the media.  

 

The best way to say it is:  "Peak oil isn't about running out of oil, it's about running out of CHEAP oil."  Unfortunately our economy depends on cheap oil, but whenever we have an opportunity to steer it away from that, even to just some small degree, the efforts are thwarted. 

Just now, jjakucyk said:

 

The best way to say it is:  "Peak oil isn't about running out of oil, it's about running out of CHEAP oil."  Unfortunately our economy depends on cheap oil, but whenever we have an opportunity to steer it away from that, even to just some small degree, the efforts are thwarted. 

I still wouldn't use the term running out, though.  It's about flow rates.  Geologists like Ken Deffeyes and the late Colin Campbell, who brought the peak oil discussion to the fore 20 years ago repeatedly said in media interviews that "it's not about running out", but like I said, it never sunk in.  A super-giant oil field can produce for a very long time after it's peak.  The rub is in the amount it can produce.  Perhaps the point is too much on the technical side, but the term "running out" has produced a lot of confusion.

Well, if the oil isn't cheap anymore, no matter how much there may be, then the cheap oil has run out.  The easy to extract conventional sweet light crude just becomes expensive because of demand, rather than the extraction and refining costs.  Of course then we get into things like demand destruction but that's a topic for another time.  

4 minutes ago, jjakucyk said:

Well, if the oil isn't cheap anymore, no matter how much there may be, then the cheap oil has run out.  The easy to extract conventional sweet light crude just becomes expensive because of demand, rather than the extraction and refining costs.  Of course then we get into things like demand destruction but that's a topic for another time.  

That's a valid point. 

1 hour ago, gildone said:

But, at the time we were able to switch to huge amounts of then untapped petroleum.  There is no comparably energy dense source to switch to now, unless we can figure out fusion, but ever since I was a kid, fusion power has always been 30-years away, and it still is.  Sidenote:  peak oil has never been about "running out".  The peak oil crowd, repeatedly and in vain and for more than a decade tried to explain this, but it never sunk in with most people, least of all the media.  

 

As I was asking upthread in 2016, though (yet still on the same page, which shows how active this issue has been for the past four years), the implications are very different if peak oil really has nothing to do with running out.  And the media is rightly concerned about whether the peak and decline has any significant implications for standards of living, not whether it simply happens.  It was more relevant (and more wrong) when it was accompanied by predictions of gasoline permanently going above $4/gal, en route to $5 and $6 and $8+.  Now it's essentially irrelevant.

 

The story of the oil industry for the last several years has been oil companies going bankrupt due to excess supply (see earlier on this page re some recent bankruptcies and others tottering on the edge), not either soaring to record valuations and profitability (see earlier on this page re: Exxon Mobil losing its place in the Dow 30) or going bankrupt due to inability to source their product.

 

1 hour ago, jjakucyk said:

 

The best way to say it is:  "Peak oil isn't about running out of oil, it's about running out of CHEAP oil."  Unfortunately our economy depends on cheap oil, but whenever we have an opportunity to steer it away from that, even to just some small degree, the efforts are thwarted. 

 

Oil is around $40/barrel.  What is your standards for "cheap?"  Are you suggesting our economy depends on oil cheaper than $40/bbl?

 

Also, the process of steering our economy away from oil dependence has been in process for a decade or more now.  And to far more than just a small degree.  And I say this as someone married to a petrochemical engineer, though also as someone who personally owns a Tesla and would own a second one today if they made a 7-passenger minivan.

 

1 hour ago, gildone said:

I still wouldn't use the term running out, though.  It's about flow rates.  Geologists like Ken Deffeyes and the late Colin Campbell, who brought the peak oil discussion to the fore 20 years ago repeatedly said in media interviews that "it's not about running out", but like I said, it never sunk in.  A super-giant oil field can produce for a very long time after it's peak.  The rub is in the amount it can produce.  Perhaps the point is too much on the technical side, but the term "running out" has produced a lot of confusion.

 

It isn't that it has produced confusion.  The point of declining production rates is simple enough.  There's a lot of talking past each other here, though.  Your geologists (of whom I admit I've never heard) may have been trying to get across to us that it wasn't about complete depletion, it was about declining flow rates.  But they need to understand that no one cares unless there's a good reason to care.  Good reasons to care include unaffordable prices, supply shortages, re-empowerment of OPEC, and, at the extreme, wars to secure critical strategic resources.  Good reasons to care do not include this:

 

https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

 

The period from 1998 to 2008 did give cause for alarm.  We've had 12 years since then and we're not in any danger of seeing $166/bbl in the near future (and even if we do, we're not at great risk of that skyrocketing further from there to $300+).  The rise of wind and solar power make it so that fuel oil is going to be at most a niche in electricity generation.  The rise of the electric car is going to make it so that it's almost as hard to get a gasoline car or light truck in 2030, 2040 at the latest, as it is to get one with a manual transmission today.  It will still be needed for aviation, nautical, and aeronautical fuel, but there will be ample supplies for that.

 

In other words, to the extent peak oil only describes the bare physical fact that conventional oil supplies are declining in flow rates by 4% a year or whatever the number is, it can be acknowledged as completely true--and completely irrelevant.