FT editorial: “Peak Oil is dead. The news that US output of liquid petroleum has regained its previous peak, reached in 1970, is enough to read the last rites over the idea that a region’s oil production will follow a shape like a bell curve, rising to a peak and then inexorably falling away.”
“Much of the theorising about Peak Oil failed to anticipate technological progress, or understand the power of economic incentives. The US boom in production from previously uncommercial shale reserves has been made possible by advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and made a reality by oil prices that 15 years ago barely seemed possible.
Yet while the strong form of the Peakists’ argument can be consigned to the dustbin of history, they were not entirely wrong. Producing oil has become harder, for reasons of both geology and politics; a crude price stuck above $100 per barrel is evidence enough of that. It may become harder still over the next 15 years.
Talk about an “age of abundance” in oil is justified only from a North American perspective. There, it is true that production is rising strongly and has the potential to rise further. Elsewhere, though, it is a different story: one of decline in fading regions such as the North Sea, and political and security threats in countries from Iraq to Venezuela. It is a striking fact that since 2005, all of the increase in the world’s crude oil production has come from the US.
….Mr Rühl describes the past few years as a period of “eerie quiet” in the oil market. As he rightly observes, that will not last forever.”
Future Today
