You heard here first, folks! Oil is unlimited! Rejoice and top off your tank!
Urb -- No -- But "Peak Oil" as a sudden collapse of the supply of oil and consequently modern "western" civilization is a myth
Oil like all scarce materials is produced based on the balance of the costs to produce and price which the consumer is willing to pay for it. Even in the presence of cartels and other attempts to control the market -- the Law of Supply and Demand will inexorably win out.
Like all scarce materials the producers will produce more at an increasing cost of production (i.e. find and extract harder to extract sources) as the demand drives up the price. Some can easily do this such as the Saudis whose costs of production right now is substantially less than 10$ / barrel. Others' production is very closely tied to the market price such as the exotic means of extraction of residual oil from old fields in Texas. They wlll just shut down if the price was to drop much because of their high cost of production.
Meanwhile consumers will consume less (the amount they decrease their consumption as the price rises) is known as price elasticity of consumption -- some will consume the same amount irrespective of price (e.g. Police Departments, DOD), others are exquisitely sensive to the cost and will find an alternative (e.g. retired people riding about the country in motor homes).
Overall as the easier to extact oil is depleted -- the price will rise -- but as it does more oil will come to the market and more consumers will find alternative -- the system will be dynamically in balance as it has been since oil was discovered. The primary use then was to take the less volatile material (kerosene) and burn it as a replacement for whale oil. The volatile fraction (gasoline) was dumped until the internal combustion engine offered a use for it. Similarly, for much of the history of the oil bidness, natural gas separated from the oil at the wellhead was flared as it was explosive and there were no pipelines.
Today, secondary recovery of untapped petroleum in old fields by solvent extraction combined with directional drilling and yes hydraulic fracturing of the rock ("fracking") enabling recovery from previously uneconomic deposits has regenerated old oil producing regions of Texas and even Pennsyvania. In addition, vast deposits previously unknown or inaccessible in places such as the Baaken formation have completely altered the known reserves in North America.
Texas today probably can extract as much more oil from the existing discoveries as has ben produced to date. If Alaska's huge untapped reserves prove to be as large as they may be -- the US would be back at #1 in global production with producible reserves at current prices (not even counting shale-oil) in excess of any country in the world.
Ergo Peak Oil is a Myth and not even a very instructive one
I totally want to print these out.
