If you're willing to do what it takes to get the oil out the oil sands of different varieties, there is no reason to run out any time soon.

You'll pay through the nose, you'll have an awful economy in many respects and you'll hasten global warming.

But you can do it.

Whether you should is another question. Unfortunately it hasn't really been asked.

40 years old, possibly with a family of her own.  In fifty years, my son will be 61, possibly with grandchildren.  What will their world be like if we keep on slurping the oil tit at today's rate of consumption?

Yep, higher prices fund higher priced answers.  But we are not running out of oil.  We are facing short supplies of refined products.  And, right now, this is because we are letting major corporations send supplies needed at home to foreign markets.  We are letting them manipulate the supply, but our demand for gasoline and for heating products can't decline much.  So they force the price up, up, up.

More refineries might be useful, but FIRST we need somebody to lock in the strategic interests of our nation BEFORE we let the resources trade on the free market.

Higher prices for oil won't give us any relief, but it may divert us into supporting more wealth building for the major corporations.  For example, if we allow the building of more refineries WITHOUT requiring service to this nations needs first, exports and profits will soar.  And we will suffer.

Ok, one point that just has to stop going around the media about how oil shale is profitable at $40 a barrel. Since energy is a main component of the cost of extraction and processing and energy (oil, NG, coal) are all increasing rapidly, that $40 figure is now much higher.

Oil Shale will always be just out of reach unless it can return a much higher EROEI and not consume vast amounts of water (another pretty valuable commodity).

Yergin is one of those people that thinks that the faster you eat the cake, the more you will have for tomorrow. That's just a flat out lie.

There still is a lot of oil out there.

What he fails to realize or state is that the theory of peak oil refers not only to the amount of oil out there, but the world-wide consumption of oil, which will do nothing but increase if current thinking prevails, and the depletion of cheap and easy to access oil.

If shale oil costs $40 a barrel to produce, how much will it be sold for? Anyone thinking the cost of producing this will decline has failed to take into consideration that this cost is based on the fact that we have cheap oil out there to make the machines, etc, necessary to produce it. A false assumption. Any technology that costs a barrel to produce a barrel is a no-gain situation. (I think most would be surprised to learn how much more it now costs to produce even light oil and also the profit margins involved. I'm not saying that oil companies aren't making a lot of money now, but I am saying that the bottom price required to keep them in business has gone from $20 a barrel a few years ago to around $40 today.)

He speaks of learning from history as if we've been producing oil for centuries. Truth is, we have used up a good portion of what it took millions of years to form in less than one century.

I would agree that technology has a chance to save the day, but I doubt we'll be fueling this world on oil a hundred years from now.

Unless of course there is a severe reduction of population on this planet (and that is a real possibility if we continue to look at oil to do for us what it has done for the last hundred years).

Can you say war, famine, starvation, disease, and freezing to death?

I thank you all as you have proven my point that sometimes reading the contrary view is intellectually healthy and you've also all proven that this site is full of very mature people ('cept for me!)! We are indeed a lucky community!

who can spot the flaw in this statement:

According MIT's Morris Adelman, "the amount of oil available to the market over the next 25 to 50 years is for all intents and purposes infinite."

I agree that "He's right."  There are plenty of hydrocarbons in the ground, quick guess 100 times more than humanity has already used.  "Peak oil" is incorrect, rather it is "Peak cheap oil" -- it is the vast petroleum pools that are running out.  

Please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale before commenting on oil shale.  Let me mention some myths I see here and elsewhere:

The shale oil profit point of $40/barrel is current, not 1970 dollars, and the wikipedia ref 2 teases with $30/barrel some day.

EROEI is important of course.  But it is an energy ratio.  It should not depend on the price of the energy.  It should not depend on the source of the energy.  It is usually said oil shale has EROEI of 1.5.  Pretty low.  If clean natural gas is burned to break down the shale, pretty bad, huh?  But if some oil shale is burned instead, same EROEI but maybe a practical process.  I don't know, the wikipedia ref 2 mentions an EROEI of 3.5.

But the biggest fallacy is to accept the EROEI as god-given.  It is just technology.  Technology improves, especially if there is lots of money to be made.  With cheap oil there was litle incentive to develop shale and other hydrocarbons.  Now there is.  Now we'll start to see great improvements in energy technologies.  And my hunch is the long range price of oil will be $50 to $60 per barrel.

"Should" we do it? -- develop all those hydrocarbons?  Of course not IMO.  But who is going to stop them?  Over the past few years I've given up hope that climate concerns will ever have a major effect on energy usage.

...quite a few Rwandan's last thoughts may have been, "if only I had listen I bit more closely to those nutter extremists on the Radio, I would have seen this coming..."

the time span over which Peak oil plays out is quite long by corporate balance sheet standards so...

• Given everyone is lying...
  
• Prices will rise most sharply "not in this financial year".

How many energy related CFO's are attempting to wind up their personal profits by hyping Peak Oil now?

I'm not saying peak oil is real, I just saying there is a wave of hype and price gouging in front of it.

some things.  He makes no mention of the damaging biproducts of our oil addiction: various types of air and water polution, global warming, environmental degradation, political corruption, etc.  

Interestingly, it's possible that William Sargant is more right than he knows about there being more oil than we realized.  Geologists are studying the possibility that oil in the ground is not a product of organic break-down, but rather is produced by geological processes deep in the earth.  Some oil fields that were thought to be "tapped out" have begun to re-fill themselves, possibly from pockets of oil that are even farther underground.  If their speculation holds true, then there may be much, much more oil down there than anybody ever considered possible.

But is that really good news?  If it's true, it means that humans will have the capacity to further increase the concentration of CO2 and other petroleum pollutants in Earth's atmosphere.  Shouldn't we be pursuing cleaner ways of living even if endless supplies of oil are on the murky horizon?

William Sargant makes no mention of oil's darker side.

of some of the technologies that this article discusses because I'm not scientifically oriented, but those of you who are can comment on this link:

http://www.free-energy.cc/

I do know cold fushion was dispelled long ago, but it's mentioned.

I know scientists will find replacements for gasoline engines for automobiles and ways to heat and cool houses that don't require fossile fuels.  Fossile fuel could then be set aside for airplanes until a replacement was found.  

Solar is almost there even for cold climates, the panels just need to be more affordable and improvements made for the storage (mostly the batteries) of the power they generate.  

vehicles that are currently being introduced into the market and its technology as applied to other products:

http://www.fuelcells.org/news/updates.html

maybe this is the plan.

Unless of course there is a severe reduction of population on this planet (and that is a real possibility if we continue to look at oil to do for us what it has done for the last hundred years).

Can you say war, famine, starvation, disease, and freezing to death?

...for building this wonderful community and for your sense of humor/modesty.

... make it unsustainable unless you can make them better.  You simply can't have 2/3 of all energy going into just getting energy out of the ground, leaving 1/3 for everyone else - you are entirely corrrect about that.

However you can multiple the number.  One of the main ways is to never use the energy directly, but only for producting capital goods that make energy.

I'm not saying peak oil is real,

I meant to say I'm not saying peak oil isn't real,.

I'm sure it is real. There is just a bunch of powerful pockets that want padding before we get there...

but I remember reading a prophesy one time that went something like this:

A quart of wheat for a day's labor or three quarts of barley, but oil and wine will run free.

Who knows?

There are a hell of a lot of grapes being planted because those that produce food are tired of being screwed. And high oil prices mean there'll be a hell of a lot of energy directed toward finding and producing more oil.

a Saudi parable:

My grandfather rode a camel

My father drove a car

I fly an airplane

My son will ride a camel