Peak Oil

The oil industry faces numerous battles on several different fronts (thus it’s a good thing for them and their shareholders that they have more money than God to fight them).  One such battle is peak oil, the concept that the planet’s ability to produce oil has peaked, and so, regardless of demand, production can only decline.  Of course, peak oil is a matter of physical fact rather than money in the bank, though its obscene wealth, in fact, has enabled the industry to convince us that peak oil will not be a significant hindrance to our ability to move our bodies and our cargo around the surface of the planet. 

I’ve attended presentations from the American Petroleum Institute (API) where their laser-sharp spokespeople vigorously contest the concept of peak oil with “facts” that, to me, seem to appear out of nowhere; they certainly fly into the teeth of the vast majority of peer-reviewed reports I’ve seen.  Yet I wonder what the API boys are saying about this piece in BusinessWeek, based on a report by Citigroup.  In less than 20 years, Saudi Arabia, currently the world’s largest producer of oil, is predicted to be a net importer of crude. Importing from where, exactly? 

I’m sure the oil industry would absolutely love to be around to provide red-blooded Americans the gas they’ll need to drag their 6.0 liter Ford Excursions around what’s left of a planet a few decades hence.  But sorry, it won’t happen.  All the money, and all the bought politicians in the world can’t change the basic geology, physics and chemistry at play here.