Walking Dead of Peak Oil: A Mindless Pursuit of Oblivion

Peak oil cultists are compelled in their belief -- they no longer have a rational choice whether to "believe" or not. They lurch from one doom projection to another, compulsively feeding on a ghoulish doom that can never satisfy their ineffable hunger.

Opec reserves are often said to be overstated, without any firm evidence being given one way or the other. Opec countries do not help themselves with their lack of transparency on reserves...Yet the most authoritative evaluation, by the consultancy IHS Energy in 2007, saw the overstatement as minor (about 7 per cent) and more than offset by under-estimates elsewhere. As Russia with 20 years of reserves at current output rates keeps increasing production, Opec with a reserves/output ratio of more than 80 years can also do so.

The advent of shale oil and gas production has reversed declining US production, is now spreading globally, and can be commercial at an oil price of just US$30 a barrel.

This breakthrough seems completely to have passed by peak-oil advocates. They claim the end of "easy oil", without noting that technology continually makes unconventional oil into conventional. _National

Oil producers are deathly afraid of oversupply in the oil market -- an oil glut. Such a glut is happening in the North American natural gas market, shaking the energy globe from Russia to Iran to Venzuela. Since oil dictatorships derive their political power from energy sales, they cannot afford to tolerate an energy glut. Such a thing is far more a threat to them than contrived and ghoulishly elaborated rumours of "peak oil."

...with more than a century's worth of resources of both coal and natural gas, it does not matter whether reserves are somewhat overstated. The production of coal, in particular, is constrained by economics and environmental concerns, not by physical availability.

The final piece in the peak-oil puzzle is the idea that declining oil production must bring a halt to economic growth. But Michael Levi from the US-based Council on Foreign Relations notes in a comprehensive demolition of the Nature article that the American economy has persistently grown much faster than its oil consumption. _National

Economic difficulties are likely to occur from Europe to China to the US. But such problems are due to malignant political effects on economies, rather than to any shortages of fuels or energy. If peak oil zombies are fixated on a great bloody mess of their own mental creation, it is but the best that they can do -- in lieu of problem solving competencies.