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Peak Oil's Bell Is Ringing

The problem in part is the definintion of oil used here. Conventional oil is what is likely to peak on the 2030 to 2050 time scale. A number of advanced technologies can be responsible for the timing. But unconventional oil is another resource that is not included here. First are tar sands, about the size of Saudi resource in Canada primarily, as well as Venezuela and elsewhere. Shale oil is a huge resource heavily in the western US, good for 50 to 100 years, beyond that coal can be converted to oil and oil products, technology already used by the Germans in WWII and the South Africans during the appartheid period. That technology has been improved tremendously and could be the source of oil based products for hundreds of years. The cost basis for these is probably in the $50 to $70/bbl oil equivalent basis. There are environmental issues that need to be addressed if one wants to use these resources, but that can and will be done. The major issue is AGW. The popular belief today is that this is 100% human sourced and thus fossil fuel based energy has to be replaced by alternatives. The politics of this is likely to govern any attempt to extend the fossil fuel era. If reality were to prevail, i.e. that Climate Change is mostly a natural phenomenon with some partical human contribution than different policy options may prevail and the impact on fossil fuels would be different. The underlying issue is how much capital investment can we afford to spend on energy related issues as a society vs. other priorities. We are talking about trillions of dollars over the next ten to twenty years. It is a major challenge.