We track world oil production using perhaps the most reliable source, Oil & Gas Journal. Their database has been updated through July 2007. World oil production declined 386,000 barrels of oil per day relative to the same period in 2006. If it continues for the full year, I believe this will be the first year-on-year decline in world oil production since 1984-1985.

The cost to retrieve "hard to get oil" should be measured in BTU's or joules, not dollars! If it takes more energy to retrieve "hard to get oil" than is in that retrieved oil, then it's a losing proposition. (This also applies to the tar sands.) Unless of course the oil is used as a feedstock rather than an energy source. We must immediately become more efficient.

Crude Awakening ... Michael T. Klare

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041108/klare

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"There are no short-term substitutes for gas and oil. When demand exceeds available supply, as we learned during the two oil crises of the 1970s, prices spike - with devastating effects on the rest of the economy. That crisis was contrived by the oil cartel. The coming oil crisis will be real."

Robert Kuttner Oct 2001

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Another Wolf at the Door

Kenneth S. Deffeyes | October 21, 2001

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=another_wolf_at_the_door

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Business Week

'Peak oil refers to the point at which world oil production plateaus before beginning to decline as depletion of the world's remaining reserves offsets ever-increased drilling. Some experts argue that we're already there, and that we won't exceed by much the daily production high of 84.5 million barrels first reached in 2005. If so, global production will bump along near these levels for years before beginning an inexorable decline.'

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_26/b4040074.htm?campaign_id=rss_magzn

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Peak Oil Overview - June 2007

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2693#more

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Recent figures on 2008 demand were 88million bpd . Only 85 million bpd is projected supply.

The difference between depletion and new supply is Not scalable with current technology and the available oil reserves.

With economies slowing with ever increasing costs for everything , but especially food and fuel , the debt pyramid that we now call our economy will collapse.

have a nice day ...

.

I said the same thing to my environmental economics class last year. However, they knew that I was using irony, not celebrating the brave new world.

I can't help but shake my head at the simplistic idea that making it warmer will automatically make it easier to get at oil and gas resources.

Making it warmer also makes ice turn to water, as anyone keeping an eye on glaciers or Greenland can see. And if that really takes off, then you have a rising sea level problem to deal with

Go check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sn%C3%B8hvit and look at the photo. A sea level rise of even a metre will make life very interesting on the island of Melkoya

For a better look at the island, check out

http://maps.google.ca/?ll=70.69,23.59&spn=0.012,0.058&t=h

and imagine what the weather can be like. A difference in sea level of one metre could mean a lot.

It seems to me that there's an easy way to engineer the post-petrochemical revolution, and a hard way.

If we wait until oil is already peaking, we'll be desperate and out of options, and desperate people with no options pay through the nose for what they need. Flood reconstruction, to use an analogy, is incomparably more expensive than flood prevention.

The alternative is to anticipate the eventual scarcity now, while we have time and choices in building an energy economy that doesn't depend on oil. Suppose that global warming does make new supplies of oil more accessible — in a sane world we would take advantage of all such opportunities to artificially inflate scarcity and move toward new solutions with a cushion (such that it is).

In the US the strategic petroleum reserve has long been used as a means of creating artificial scarcity for the purpose of price support — it could also serve the purpose of accelerating conversion to the emerging energy paradigm.

So if we're going to have a jack-booted authoritarian government, why not get all "khaki green" (to use Bruce Sterling's phrase) and seize newly-thawed Alaskan oil resources in the name of the common good?

People should never come before any other concerns. Eventually we will in fact come to that point. Whether it's the arctic or the mountains purple majesty or whathaveyou. Eventually we will be forced to decide if its us or the bears and the scenery. But if you're willing to ignore that I'm fine as long as you commit to sacrificing yourself when the time comes.

Because it gets to the point - it doesn't matter if we can get to it, the question will be if it's worthwhile from an energy perspective, and less so financially.

The question of whether we've hit peak oil or not is actually kind of irrelevant. Likely, it will be a rear-view mirror recognition - "Oh yeah, based on how prices have gone, we hit it back in 20nn". The point is to be prepared once that happens, and extra time means we make the transition easier.

Personally, not only do I think we won't cushion the blow, but that we'll barrel (no pun intended) faster & faster into the wall. Maybe that's "required", I don't know. Individually we can sometimes plan well for the future, but collectively we're useless far too often. It's much to easy to procrastinate and let someone else deal with it (with the obvious hope that the "someone else" really is someone else, and not us).

Peak Oil will save us from Global warming...

Cause we just can't burn coal nearly as fast as can burn oil...

Or course maybe they will try to burn coal at a net loss to extract oil from difficult places.

But eventually running out will solve the carbon problem.

Comments like this are a perfect example of where this crowd is coming from. They are the ones who care nothing about the future that is in store for their children and grandchildren as long as they get theirs. We can argue until the cows come home, how much oil is left for us to extract, but one thing nobody argues is that the amount is finite and one day in the not very distant future it will all be gone.