Here’s a piece from Daily Finance from a couple days back, “Is Oil Output Peaking or Not? Either Way, Cheap Oil Is Gone for Good.”
As investors and as drivers, most of us have an interest in the price of oil, and what it’s going to do next. But if you’re having trouble figuring out whether global oil production is about to peak — an occurrence that will inevitably be followed by a surge in oil prices — you’re not alone.
Supporters and critics of the
theory of peak oil, which predicts when the maximum level of global oil production will be reached and the rate of its decline afterward, are about as far apart in their assumptions and conclusions as the Union and Confederacy were in early 1861.Wikileaks sparked a new round in the peak-oil debate this week after it released what it says are
confidential cables from U.S. embassy officials that cite a senior Saudi government oil executive’s 2007 conclusion that the kingdom’s oil reserves may have been overstated by 300 billion barrels — about 40%.