Poirot the fact that Obama is a ratbag greenie, who has been preventing the US exploiting it's own huge reserves of oil, or stopping the pipeline from Canada is well known. Most know that the major donors to his campaign are set to benefit from this. Along with the billions he has handed out to alternative energy companies, [many now bankrupt], this type of corruption has become a hallmark of his administration.

Have you noticed he has jumped on the shale gas band wagon, a reversal of his trying to prevent it until now. Must want to get reelected.

Michael we now know we have new sources of transport fuel in the huge gas deposits now available. WE are not going to run out of energy.

We have all that coal, which if we don't do the sensible thing & burn it to make electricity, will be available to produce all the chemicals we now do from oil & gas.

We have at least 100 years of energy, & if we can't develop new technologies in that time, [by private enterprise, not government grants], we deserve to fail.

Sorry mate, you are not going to turn peak oil into the new global warming con job, now that it has failed.

What none of these people leaving comments seem to understand is that Peak Oil is not about reserve size - it is about FLOW RATES. Peak Oil means peak oil production as measured in millions of barrels per day. As the quality of the oil resources declines (i.e. the remaining oil is denser, deeper under the sea, in smaller average field sizes, is more difficult to extract etc.) then the total flow rate that can be achieved declines. Quite simply, the oil gets more expensive to extract (which is just an economics world reflection of the fact that more of the world's total energy flow is having to be put back into energy production - i.e. the energy profitability of energy production is falling). It would not matter if the entire planet Earth was made up of 50% hydrocarbons - if those hydrocarbons cannot be extracted at an energy profit then the extraction activity simply cannot occur. Shale gas, shale oil etc may sound exciting but it invovles a phenomenal amount of drilling per unit volume produced since the wells deplete rapidly. Also, the resource is dispersed which causes logistical problems for collection, transport to refineries etc. If any of the people commenting here had actually read the King and Murray article they would realise that the article is describing how, despite massive price signals, the production rate of oil has stalled since 2005 (that is 7 years ago now!). Alternative forms of oil production exist but they are expensive and cannot be scaled up to meet the drop in production of conventional oil from existing fields which is running at around 5% per year. Soon the drop in conventional production will overtake the increase in non-conventional and then you will see an decline in total production. Pound this simple concept into your head Curmudgeon!

Poirot - yep, there are activists protests, but there will always be activist protests. That they don't want the pipeline is hardly surprising. Peak oil is still dead.

Michael_In_Adelaide - you've hit on it!.. flow rates are indeed important. the question has always been will the rates of production be maintained and increased, despite the ongoing shift from OPEC to non-OPEC oil? That is far more important than any blather about peak oil, and what the original forecasts were about. The original proponents (Campbell and Laherrere) of the forecasts in their modern form were never concerned over the world running out oil, as such, but of disruption due to the switch from conventional to unconventional oil. Good work!

Peak oil and global climate change are to different equations, and both are real. Climate change needs less pollution, and peak oil means more money for the same amount, of pollution. Even though one will compliment the other, this should not be seen as a conspiracy, for the sake of people like Hasbeen, who seem to have a problem with climate change and peak oil occurring at the same time.

No thinking person, unless one of the gravy train passengers, could possibly believe in global warming any longer, after all the science recently produced, & the exposure of the warmers tricks.

Are you a gravy train rider 579, or just a non thinker?

Atman commented on "immense" gas finds.
The shale gas finds in the US are not the bonanza many expected and
some of the major companies in the field such as Chesapeake have
stopped drilling because it is just not economic.
Recent articles on natural gas prospects have been rather sobering.

http://tinyurl.com/72fhe4y

When you have depletion rates of 25% a year, you have to be drilling
flat out to stand still.

Often you hear of these MASSIVE finds of oil such as Brazil.
Just divide their expected resources by 85 million and receive a shock
on how many days it would supply the world.
Then wait till what they say the reserves are and it all might reach
into next week.

The oil sands in Canada will be fine but the cost in energy to get it
has been so high, that while they can mix it with cheaper oil it is
not too bad, but as the mix gets more oil sands into it the cost will
cut back its production.
It is not expected that Canada will get above 5 Mbd.
Also it takes a lot of natural gas to produce it. ERoEI again.

No, the real problem is that the politicians are suppressing the
reports, and I think it is because they dread being asked;
"And what are you going to do about it ?"