I find it quite amazing how many people have bought into the unconventional gas is a game changer argument and that peak oil is no longer a problem. Without even getting into a detailed analysis the fact that gas is not oil and cannot readily be interchanged for oil in the majority of applications should give a fair indication that it is not a solution to peak oil. Peak oil is not the most immediate problem anyway; it is the declining quantity of oil available in the export markets (due to an increasing number of oil exporting nations ceasing to be oil exporters as their domestic consumption matches or exceeds their domestic production, the increasing consumption levels of the remaining exporters and rapid demand growth from China and India).

And a fair argument could be made that the oil price spike was a major contributor to the GFC (along with of course the other factors such as too much debt and a bursting US housing bubble). At least that is according to respected economist James Hamilton who along with others has identified that every post war recession (less one) in the US was proceeded by an oil price spike. (http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2011/01/oil_shocks_and_2.html)

And the other comment that I find staggering that people believe is that the "US is currently moving towards being an oil exporter again."

A slight but not insignificant uptick in production does not constitute the US becoming a net oil exporter again. Go read the data from the US governments very own Energy Information Administration: http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=US&trk=p1#pet

2011 Consumption: 18,835 mb/d
2011 Production: 10,107 mb/d

Deficit (eg. imports): 8,728 mb/d

To put that in context that deficit is about 10% of global oil production.

Leckos you are infatuated with oil.Gas as Grahamy pointed out is taking over.Also there are at least 500 yrs of coal left which can be liquified.

There is no shortage of energy,just a shortage of imagination and courage by people like you.

Graham, prepare to be stunned:

Colin Campbell predicted the current economic malaise in 2005:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxO0AAEcojU

Economist Professor James Hamilton of the University of California in a Brookings Institute publication blamed the oil price spike of 2008 for triggering the financial crisis and bursting of the USA housing debt bubble. This is mentioned here:

http://oil-price.net/en/articles/did-high-oil-prices-cause-financial-crash.php

and Hamilton's paper is available here:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/Programs/ES/BPEA/2009_spring_bpea_papers/2009a_bpea_hamilton.pdf

Other related work by Hamilton can be found here:

http://weber.ucsd.edu/~jhamilto/

Even the IMF is coming around, slowly, to a peak oil way of thinking about economic growth although it has a long way to go:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/may/13/oil-price-doubling-decade-imf

And if you still believe that unconventional gas will save the world then you have obviously not bothered to read or listen to anything by Art Berman:

http://www.energybulletin.net/media/2012-06-20/after-goldrush-learning-us-shale-gas-experience

Why do you think BHP had to write down its US shale gas "assets"?

Of course, most people cannot understand that the laws of physics might limit human ambition or underpin the behaviour of a system such as the human economy. But without an understanding of energy any form of economic thinking can never accurately reflect (or predict) reality.

MIA,anyone who quotes the IMF counterfeiters as a reliable source of information has lost it also.They are part of the New World Order and the Banking Miliatry Industrial Complex who want us all totally subjugated.

Michael the reason BHP has written down it's shale gas assets is that it is so cheap & easy to extract, so many companies are doing it that the price of gas has dropped by 70%. In the US, unlike here, companies have to sell on the open market. The profit margins are way down.

Utilities are converting to it from coal in some power generation plants with suitable systems, because it is now cheaper than coal, in many places. Other than the fool states mandating wind power, electricity prices in many states of the US are falling like a stone.

Not only that, but quite a bit of oil is coming from the same shale, with the fracking. Many other ageing oil wells are now flowing better than when new, after fracking.

If the Club of Rome were hoping oil shortages would send us back to subsistence farming, they now know they require another fraud. Peak oil has failed, as has global warming.

Haven't you noticed they are trying on ocean acidification as a replacement scare campaign? Pity for them the physics doesn't work there either. They are going to have to find a good one, like the boy who called wolf too often, they have blown it. Those who aren't really dumb, or fellow travelers, are going to take much more to scare them in future.