by jeffvail
The Oil Drum, October 3rd

It is quite common to hear experts explain that the current tight oil markets are due to “above-ground factors,” and not a result of a global peaking in oil production. In reality, geological peaking is driving the geopolitical events that constitute the most significant “above-ground factors” such as the chaos in Iraq and Nigeria, the nationalization in Venezuela and Bolivia, etc. Geological peaking spawns positive feedback loops within the geopolitical system. Critically, these loops are not separable from the geological events—they are part of the broader “system” of Peak Oil.

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Peak Oil theory takes the logistic curve decline of oil from individual fields and producing regions and extrapolates those effects to the world. The result of that extrapolation is that world oil production will follow a geologically-driven logistic curve, and that it will peak and decline in a manner similar to individual fields or producing regions. The decline of a logistic curve gradually tails of in a "long tail" of oil production. The result is a phrase that has become virtual dogma: "Peak Oil is not the end of oil production, but rather the beginning of an inexorable decline in production." Geopolitical positive feedback-loops, however, do not act like logistic curves. They are positive feedback loops that are both self-intensifying and intensified by geologically-driven declines in production. While the geologically-dictated baseline in oil production decline may exhibit a long tail of ongoing production, geopolitical forces may abruptly chop off that tail. Commercial oil production requires some threshold level of security, rule of law, etc. to operate at all. Below that threshold, oil production does not gradually decline, but rather stops completely. Will geopolitical forces, combined with geologically-driven decline, be sufficient to bring oil production to a total halt in the near-term, at least regionally?