Peak oil is starting to rear its ugly head

[NJ5]

BengaBenga said:
At the current moment the demand is equal to a year ago. The market price very muchs steers the demand.
The current price is way too high, but that's mainly due to investment funds trying to make money out of oil. Imo commodities shouldn't have interference from money-hungry financial people.

Peak-oil is a myth by the way. It's true that the EASY OIL is mostly gone, but that doesn't mean these recources are depleted. There is still a lot of production from enormous oil fields in Saudi, Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, Iran etc.
Once Iraq and Nigeria stabilize production can be upped even further.
Problems are not to be expected for the next 20 years or so. Saudi alone can provide the world for about 10 years with oil, and they haven't even looked much beyond their know petroleum system.

And there's still a lot of exploration for new hydrocarbons. Thee Canadian tar-sands, deep-sea, the arctic. There are still a lot of regions where we haven't even really started because of the big investments needed, but where the high oil price allows for investments now.
Just in the last 3 months two enormous oil fields were discoverd off-shore Brasil.
Alaska should become the next Gulf of Mexico for the US within a few years.

That being said: it's very important to increase the usage of alternative sources of energy. Partly to release the pressure from the oil producers, that constantly have to max their production and to account for growing demand. But most importantly to spare the environment. CO2 reduction is of imminent importance.
Also it makes very little sense to use oil as a fuel, where it is simply burned, while it's such an important chemical component in all artificial created materials, like plastics.

I wish it were that simple, unfortunately I don't think it is.

Trading and speculation are certainly increasing the prices a bit, but it can't be enough to explain the massive price increases we're seeing... The very fact that speculators can increase the price shows that supply isn't strong in the first place.

"Peak oil is a myth" you said. Now that's just plain wrong. Peak oil is the very opposite of a myth, it's a mathematically proven fact. When you have a finite resource being consumed, at some point production will have to peak. The only relatively open question is when that peak will occur.

Regarding exploration, yes there are a lot of ongoing projects and discoveries, unfortunately they don't seem to be enough to counter the depletion in existing oil fields. Exploration of those new fields is not only labor-intensive, but also energy-intensive which makes the actual retrievable amount of oil lower than it would seem by looking at the fields' sizes. The Canadian tar sands are a very dirty business, the amount of fresh water required to mine those sands is disgusting in terms of environmental impact.

@Sri Lumpa: Indeed, inflation also worries me a lot.

@Everyone else: Sorry if I missed something important to reply to, I'll look here later again :)