Oversupply in crude markets could take months or even years to fix depending on when producers outside OPEC cut their output, Abu Dhabi-based The National reported, citing comments by U.A.E. Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei.
“We are experiencing an obvious oversupply in the market that needs time to be absorbed,” the newspaper reported Mazrouei as saying in e-mailed comments. The United Arab Emirates supported the November decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to maintain production, The National reported Mazrouei as saying.

Brent crude, a pricing benchmark for more than half of the world’s oil, tumbled 48 percent last year, the most since 2008. OPEC decided Nov. 27 to maintain production instead of cutting output to eliminate a surplus left by increased supplies from the U.S. to Russia. “Depending on the actual production growth from non-OPEC countries, this problem could take months.

Valley Guy first;
Of course it is serious, have you not yet realised that there is not
enough economically available fossil fuels to warm the planet like
the IPCC & others have alleged ? That was shown by the Upsalla Unis
Global Energy Systems Group years ago.

Is Mise;
Ah yes of course Glenn Davis !

Rhrosty;
Well let us form a company to rescue the Great Barrier Reef from oil
spills and paint the drilling rigs green !

I am afraid, that as the politicians have been ignoring the first
warnings they were given in the 1980 & 90s it is now too late to do
other than go into a form of low tech economy.
So long as we can still make and recover scrap steel and some other
important metals we might be able to keep existing plant operating.

Everything will become local, even electricity generation.
Keeping the internet going will almost certainly be impossible.

What say you Rhrosty ?

Valley Guy;
I just went and read that article to which you gave the link.
Did you notice the date ? July 2011.
There has been quite a bit of no change since then.
I just cannot see any point in worrying about global climate change.
Here in Australia we might have starved by then ! Hi !

Given that oil is a finite resource its obvious that sooner or later we will start to run out of it

Crowie and others;
I have for a long time expected that peak oil would be confirmed with
large changes both up and down in oil prices. I always thought that
Kenneth Deffreys opinion that there would be a number of cycles would
be what to expect.
However it now looks like there might only be either one or two cycles.
We could be on the verge of a significant wind down.

This article by Gail Tverberg makes interesting reading.

http://tinyurl.com/ktt79rd

I would like to hear others opinions.

It seems to me that the current collapse in oil prices is just a blip which will soon right itself.
We can analyse this as much as we want but in the end its all about countries and corporations trying to make as much money out of the worlds dwindling supplies of oil as they can before it runs out.