Ferdinand E. Banks

Oil Futures Market: Unwinding the Bubble

Not a believer in peak oil bunk, you say. I tell you how I dealt with this for my students in Bangkok last year, where at least half of them were graduate engineers working for oil companies, and did NOT believe in peak oil. I explained to them as carefully as I could why the oil output peaked in the US - a country with the best technology and engineers in the world, where "best" includes quantity as well as quantity. And, if you have a problem with the English language, try Russian, because one of the big decision makers in Russia recently said that oil in that country will never exceed 10 mb/d. That sounds like a peak to me. even if he might be a little wrong. And if you have a problem with English and Russian, try Arabic, because despite what you hear about all the oil in the Middle East, you will be seeing some peaking there too, and according to some observers it will start in about a decade - if not sooner.

Finally, is it true that the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts where this topic is concerned?