Peak Oil is it real? is it happening?

I dont know if any of you have seen this website before www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net... but i read it and am pretty alarmed by what i read. Ive heard people talk about Peak Oil for years, but after taking a look at gas prices latly and reading in the news that supplies are shorter than exspected, im begining to wonder if it holds some weight.

Anyway if youve seen this before let me know what you think, and if you havnt check it out

heres a current example of what i meant by shrinking supplies:

news.bbc.co.uk...

There were some discussions on this board regarding this topic with good rebuttals to skeptics. Here's one:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Frankly, the peak oil phenomenon is very real as everyone will soon know.

thanks for the links aeon, looks like i missed the bus on this one.

its good to know that people are talking about this though. i was amazed at how everyone (myself included) just dosnt think about something like this happening, when really it is common sense that the oil will one day run out

Another article that you don't want to miss www.atsnn.com...
One of my favorites, even if it wasn't my story.

I believe that this is a very real situation, and it won't be hidden for much longer.

Its not happening right now. It could any time as soon as tomorrow or in 20 years. However, given all current SCIENTIFIC DATA (not oil company blather) it will happen within 20 years.

Recent prices are purely OPEC price fixing, not peak oil.

One thing that is for sure is, it won't last forever, so it would be best to find alternatives before it bites is in the ars.

Originally posted by Quest
Recent prices are purely OPEC price fixing, not peak oil.

It's been my understanding that it's the refineries that are manipulating the prices at this time as they're seeing triple their forcasted profit margins.

I talked to an econ professor of mine yesterday, who is one of those crazy genius types, and he said this is all price fixing and not peak oil. He said he exspects it to go down 15 cents by the next month or so.

The thing about it is i just cant see prices ever going back to the way they were when i started driving back in 99' and 2000. At one point i was payin 0.98 a gallon.
After all ive read i think it will just keep steadily climbing,
and lots quicker than inflation.

I don't think what is happening with prices right now is the peak oil, but I do think that we are going to run out sooner than they are letting on. Didn't Shell or someone just admit that there reserves are like 25% smaller than they thought.

Get ready for WWIII

Wgatenson:
your right about shells oil reserves.
Shell apperantly over estimated the amount of oil they could "profitably" extract form their feilds by 20%.

heres the link:
www.reuters.co.uk...�ion=finance

regarding the Reuters link to Shell story above...the page at Reutires is blank, I cant assume that's always been the case.

Resources are Scare, Support Our Troops!

I have an article from Discover magazine, June 1999. Article titled Why we'll never run out of oil. Here is one part of the article:

These days a host of innovators is probing for new sources of oil underwater. Geologists have perfected seismic imaging of seafloor geology, with the hope of tapping into vast new oil fields like the one that lies beneath the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. That region could harbor a staggering 200 billion barrels--making it one of the largest oil basins ever discovered. And drilling companies can now venture well over a mile into the seafloor. Unmanned submarines make the descent, fitted with robotic arms that guide the drill into the seafloor. The Gulf of Mexico could produce a total of 15 billion barrels, the coast of Brazil 30 billion, and the coast of Angola and elsewhere along West Africa another 30 billion--totaling some 75 billion barrels. "This ultra-deepwater drilling moves into the realm of science fiction; it's something no one ever believed would be possible," says Lynch. By the year 2005, a fifth of the world's oil could be recovered from such deepwater drilling.

Basically what the article is saying that if you pay the right people enough money, there is a lot more untapped oil reserves that we haven't even begun to imagine.

Here we go. I found a link to the full story. Anyone else hear of this before?

I personally think this Peak Oil is a scare tactic to justify raising oil prices.

i read the link you posted nyarlathotep, and if i had read this when it came out 5 years ago i would have believed it too. It only cost me 98 cents a gallon or so to fill up then.

i then found an excerpt from www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net...
that refrenced about the caspian sea finds:

As recently as September 2001, the Caspian Sea was thought to be the oil find of the century. By December 2002, however, just after US troops took Afghanistan, British Petroleum announced disappointing Caspian drilling results. The "oil find of the century" was little more than a drop in the ocean. Instead of earlier predictions of oil reserves above 200 billion barrels, the US State Department announced, "Caspian oil represents 4% of world reserves. It will never dominate the world's markets."

i would like to think it is a scare tactic but i think there would be to much money to be made if a company broke ranks and sold oil for cheeper. Thats the premise of peak oil, not that we will run out of oil completly, but that it will become to exspensive to obtain, to be profitable.

Peak Oil is a statistical fact. So, assuming we don't find a mass of oil near the surface or get some magically advanced oil mining technology, it's going to happen.

The problem isn't the amount of oil we have. It's our ability to get it out of the ground and refine it. I don't believe we're going to fall into the stone age, but things we take for granted now are going to quickly become not to common. We'll still have cars, we'll still have electricity, that isn't goin away. But our use of it will eb curtailed. If the government doesn't enforce it, it will eventually occur just due to the laws of economics. You can't use a product or service that the supplier does not have or that you cannot afford.

However I do think (or hope) that some form of alternate energy will be utilized. We aren't going to go over to a completely renewable energy economy, but it will help pick up the slack. I think that once thing get bad enough, Nuclear Power (which is relatively clean and efficient) will become much more the norm. If it wasn't for the cultural fear of anything with the word 'nuclear' in it, we'd be at that point already.

heres what i think of all this stuff condensed. I think Shell is just the begining. I think one company after another will be forced to admit they dont have as much oil as they say they do.

Well why do they lie?

Because if we think there is plenty of oil then we will find no need to pursue new technologies, and will keep using what we have. By keeping us in the dark of the impending end of cheap oil. they insure profits at the exspense of all of us, leaving us up the proverbial river.

we wont develop new technology because oil is so cheap, and by the time it starts to get exspensive it will be too late to impliment a new infestructure to replace gas stations, or replace technology.

none of the non oil engines we have can do what oil does as efficiently. the end of cheap oil will be here soon, its a statistical fact like Esoterica said, but i dont see us still having cars or electricity. i dont see how society will be able to deal with $100 a barrel oil. We are already in risk of an economic recession from a 50 cents a gallon increase.

I found an interesting site about this topic.

planetforlife.com...

tell me what you think about it The Republic, and read the WHOLE article.

I wonder who the coalition will attack next to secure the remaining precious oil? This is kinda like Dune, whoever controls the spice....

I've been trying to tell people about peak oil, I dont want them to be caught with their pants down when it happens, but it seems the general public has no idea. They greatly overestimate the amount of oil available, just like shell did.

nyarlathotep:
i have not seen that site before and i found it very intresting. I read the WHOLE artical like you asked and am glad i did.

here is quote i found most intresting:
How can Proven Reserves increase when 27 billion barrels are produced (consumed) every year? New oil reserves are being discovered but only at the rate of 6 billion barrels per year which offsets only 25 per cent of consumption. The truth is that Unconventional Oil is being relabeled as Proven Reserves

unconventional oil is not fit for extraction. it takes more energy to extract the oil from canadian tar sands then could be produced by the oil that will be derivied from it.

the economics section at the end is very helpful in understanding why deep water drilling is not profitable.
It sates that the surface wells in the begining of the 20th century would produce 200 times the oil to pay for the cost of the well. current deep wells only produce 5 times the cost of the wells.

in short we are witnessing the oil business becoming less profitable.
and what happens when profits vanish for a big corperation?
(1)prices go up
(2)the company will go to extreme measures to insure future profits (lying for shell oil)

the companies are lying to the world at the exspense of all of us, and very few people know or care.

thank you for posting that link
i went to the home page and found it very informative also:
planetforlife.com...

in short the more i reaserch the more serious a problem i realize this is.

Well it looks like even OPEC cant control the mess that the price of oil has become. I live in one of the cheapest states for gas prices and its just jumped to 1.86 here. Obviously since this even is out of OPEC's control this is unlike the oil crisis of the 70's. There is no talk of prices letting up either.
www.reuters.com...