[Unlike Deffeyes,] not every oil expert agrees we’ve driven off that cliff. Daniel Yergin is chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of “The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.” He wrote a The Washington Post editorial column in July 2005 in which he said our capacity to produce oil will grow until at least 2010, due in part to advances in technology that allow more oil recovery in Canada, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Azerbaijan, Angola, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Algeria and Libya.
“As skills improve, output from many producing regions will be much greater than anticipated,” Yergin wrote. “The share of ‘unconventional oil’- Canadian oil sands, ultra-deep-water developments, ‘natural gas liquids’-will rise . . . Over the next few years, new facilities will be transforming what are inaccessible natural gas reserves in different parts of the world into a quality, diesel-like fuel.”
“There’s a lot of people who don’t think we’ve reached (the world oil production peak),” said Rich Seifert, the energy and housing specialist at the Cooperative Extension Service of the University of Alaska Fairbanks who helped bring Deffeyes to Alaska. “But the peak of U.S. production in the 1970s wasn’t really clear until a year or two later. It’s only clear when it’s in the rear-view mirror.
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