The IEA prognosis is riddled with dubious assumptions. For starters many informed observers predict that crude oil production will decline, not increase. Since liquid fuels are critical to the economy in growing and distributing food, delivering materials and getting to work it is on the cards that world economy may shrink, not grow. On the way demand for coal and gas may decline as well unless these become oil substitutes. If it turns out that way the fundamental premise of continued economic growth will turn out to have been wrong.

The report fails to notice that China and India are running out of domestic coal and exporters like Australia will be unable to fill the gap. Politicians will find a million reasons to delay carbon pricing but eventually carbon will get expensive anyway. However I think the report hits the nail on the head with a few other observations. The gas glut won't last long, renewables subsidies will be too expensive, fossil fuel subsidies will linger on and a nuclear build will be slow and costly. The IEA report is really more about making reassuring noises for economic conservatives. I think reality will turn out to be a slow paced muddle, hopefully without major wars breaking out.

It would be good if we had a government that looked into the future and took steps to organize for the inevitable disruption that peak oil will soon cause.
We are getting to the bottom of our oil barrel and will soon be spending more than we can afford to import oil to keep our economy going. We have a large but not infinite supply of gas here and this could be used as a stopgap to provide us with transportation fuel until other methods (if any) are discovered.
The first step would be to nationalize the gas industry, curtail the exports and set up an infrastructure to distribute the gas to the main population centers.
When you poke a US dollar into a fuel tank on a truck or bus it will not run the engine.
What is the use of selling of this precious asset for useless US dollars?
We only have a few years left before we are in serious trouble.
Recently I noticed that commercial trucks were sporting a sign that said, “without truck Australia stops”.
A better sign would be “with out diesel, trucks stop”.

Tasweagen.
The author did not comment on the where the IEA report states that
crude oil production peaked in 2006 at around 70 Mbd and has now fallen
to 65 Mbd and that it will never reach its peak again.
Such a statement by the IEA would have produced banner headlines one
should expect.
Funny thing is crude oil peaked in 2005, not 2006.

Re the coal well the German Energy Watch group expects peak Coal by 2025.
There us a later report from elsewhere that predicts 2011, hmmm.

Sarnian;
A better sign would be “with out diesel, trucks stop”.

Good one, where can we get them made ?

Sorry fellas but the IEA report changed nothing whatever. All it really shows is what the rest of the oil industry suspected, that the IEA has gone "peakist". Oil prices are expected to go up but, as has long been acknowledged, the main factor is OPEC's power as a cartel. The real question has never been a shortage of oil, as such, but whether the switch between easy-lift cheap oil, and unconventional oil and the likes deep water oil will occur without disruption.

In 2006 the influential advisory company Cambridge Energy Research Association (more authorative than the IEA), put the peak in conventional oil production at 2040 but with unconventional oil adding quite a bit to that, and the peak extending over several decades. The CERA release, dated November 14, 2006, can be found online. Its also clear the organisation, like most of the rest of the industry, has little time for peak oil. Nothing has happened to change that - yes, I do realise there has been a price spike which brought the peak oil hopefuls out in droves. the spike has since gone away (leaving oil prices higher, as was generally expected).

Posters were saying that the peak in oil production has already occured. Bwwwhahahahahaha! You do know that the oil reserve figurtes are simply guess work? OPEC has not produced reliable reserve figures for decades. The real problem is and remains the cartel's failure to invest in production - for very good reasons for their own.

How many decades has it taken to get to this supposed peak oil.
It's just as far down the hill as it is up.
For some reason you mob can't wait for oil to run out.
It's not going to happen in your lifetime.
I think you will find that the fuelling of engines will change long before oil runs out.
It takes a machine to make a machine.
So rest easy, and don't let it rob you of any sleep.

Every time an article begins with "It's Official" you can bet that its yet another attempt to make a weak case sound much stronger than it really is.