Although talk about burying the lead: you have to read through all the usual tired song about SUVs, summer demand etc etc before you get to these nuggets.

Even more critically, Americans can no longer count on abundant supplies of cheap fossil fuels, because developing nations like China and India are emerging as major competitors for resources. This is occurring just as global oil production may be hitting a plateau, a growing number of specialists say. Worldwide output, now about 80 million barrels a day, may fall short of the 100 million barrels a day that energy officials are counting on reaching within the next decade, they say…

“Oil supplies will diminish, that’s geology,” said Kenneth S. Deffeyes, a professor emeritus of geology at Princeton University and the author of “Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert’s Peak” (Hill & Wang, 2005). Professor Deffeyes predicts that global oil production will reach its peak around Thanksgiving Day and decline after that. “The negligence comes from doing nothing about alternative fuels or conservation measures over the past 20 years. Now it is too late. The oil is gone.”

After previous disruptions, as when the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries took control of their oil resources from foreign oil companies like Chevron in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, those companies managed to rebound when high oil prices let them develop high-cost regions like the north slope of Alaska and the North Sea. But the price collapse of the 1980’s led to nearly two decades of oil oversupply that discouraged additional investments.

In recent years, oil executives say they have made discoveries in Angola, Nigeria, Libya, Kazakhstan and Algeria, to name a few countries. The industry hope is that increased exploration and more intensive efforts at existing oil fields will enable producers to expand output enough to keep up demand, preventing prices from soaring and sustaining economic growth around the world.

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