In the two years since I first started writing about the issue of peak oil, the price of crude has risen from nearly $66 to $93 per barrel. In the same period, global oil production has effectively plateaued, declining slightly from its peak of 82.9 million barrels per day in May of 2005 to 81.2 in September of 2007. (The peak for “all liquids” which includes things like biofuels and coal to liquids, was in 2006).
Last year, as prices temporarily dropped into the $50 range and a purportedly large deepwater oil field was found in the Gulf of Mexico, the idea of peak oil was ridiculed as “garbage” by energy consultants at Cambridge Energy Resources (CERA), called a conspiracy of oil companies by left-wing populists, dismissed as “not in sight” by Exxon Mobil , and written off as a “fading” theory by a New York Times reporter.
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