John Kemp, Reuters: “Technology vanquishes the peak-oilers, again,” his title reads. “The decision to shutter “The Oil Drum”, the leading website devoted to peak oil, has come to symbolise the end of an era – and sparked a furious debate about whether the theory was all along based on a fundamental mistake.”“The site’s authors and editors blamed the decision to archive it on the “scarcity of new content caused by a dwindling number of contributors,” according to a statement on July 3.
“Because of this and the high expense of running the site, the board has unanimously decided that the best course of action is to convert the site to a static archive,” they noted sadly.
For critics, the site’s demise marks the end of a flawed theory and more generally the fact the commodity supercycle has turned.
“Peak oil theory has basically gone the way of the California Condor, from widespread existence and acceptance … to near extinction,” Forbes magazine wrote in a polemical column (“As fracking rises, peak oil theory slowly dies” July 26).”
Future Today
