<i>"A year ago, if anyone in the petroleum business had suggested that the moment of Peak Oil had already passed, they would have been laughed right off the drilling rig.
Then 2020 happened. ... Humanity's thirst for oil may never again return to prior levels."</i><p>That's not what peak oil means. Peak oil is exactly the opposite: when demand for cheap oil outstrips supply.<p>In this article they're talking about there being more supply than demand: exactly the opposite of peak oil.<p>But, yeah, I guess if they redefine peak oil to mean what they want it to mean, they have a point.<p>Update:<p>I've thought about it some more, and I realized that what they describe <i>is</i> peak oil. It's not that the definition of peak oil has changed, but what counts as "cheap" has changed.<p>So there are really two ways to achieve peak oil.<p>The first way is for the definition of "cheap oil" to stay the same, but the supply of oil at that price level to permanently drop below the demand for oil at that price level.<p>The second way is for the definition of "cheap oil" to drop while supply at the previous price level stays the same.<p>The fact that "cheap oil" may be redefined shows that "peak oil" is a flexible concept, not something etched in stone.<p>When the price at which oil seems "cheap" rises, then the supply could still be there, and when that price falls then it's no surprise there's not as much of it any more.<p>Or maybe I'm confused again? What do you think?
The title should be "Peak Oil Will Never Happen"<p>"Peak Oil" theory is about running out of oil supply. With all the fracking oil sources now available to tap in the US at relatively short notice, the world of oil is very different now. OPEC used to be able to control supply, demand was inelastic, and thus they could control the price. Fracking is expensive, but you can produce a huge amount of oil by just spending more $/barrel to get it out of the ground. A lot of the oil is owned privately in west Texas and will be available for extraction for the foreseeable future. For the first time since the 1970's(maybe earlier/never?) oil pricing will closely follow classic supply and demand curves.<p>Another interesting thing is that the US is now producing more oil than it is consuming. It will probably be a net exporter going forward. This changes the realpolitik view of the Middle East. The US could definitely get the hell out of there militarily and just keep a lookout for nuclear weapons production projects (or even just leave that to the Israelis who we already massively support). This is a huge deal that I don't see discussed at all.
"Peak Oil" was originally about supply problems. The article reports, eventually, that the usage has shifted in recent years. What they say makes sense to me, but I think the article would be better had they mentioned it sooner.<p><i>The term “peak oil” didn’t always refer to demand. It started with the premise that the world’s supply of crude was finite. Eventually no matter how hard drillers tried, they wouldn’t be able to pull more oil out of the ground. A transportation crisis would ensue.</i><p><i>The peak oil hypothesis dominated economic thinking for decades. But it turned out that with fracking, deep-water drilling, and oil sands, there’s a lot more oil than we once thought. More recently, the idea of a demand-driven peak took hold. Petrostates fear it, environmentalists pray for it.</i>
I have no idea why people in this thread are arguing about the definition of peak oil when the relevant topic is peak demand. I find it interesting that energy companies are struggling with the idea of leaving it in the ground.
Why is every article from bloomberg that gets upvoted on HN based on lies and misconceptions?<p>No, we haven't reached "peak oil" unless you redefine it differently than it's mostly been defined for decades.