Have We Passed the Peak ?  

The Viridian sites seem to have been commenting on peak oil a lot lately.

I was a bit surprised so many people have picked up this "anonymous letter from an oil industry insider" (every oil industry insider I know either scoffs at peak oil or doesn't want to talk about it) - it doesn't say anything that most peak oil people haven't been saying for a few years now.

Except for the delightfully grim ending of course.

It is not a question of “if” peak oil has occurred – it has! The better question might be “when are the crows coming home to roost?” When will we begin to actually experience the shortages and the rising prices? I think we might make a decade, if everybody plays nice across the world. But when has that ever happened when something got scarce?

Just wanted to get that off my chest. I have been maligned and spit on by too many people who drive cars and use electricity, and then bitch about prices or claim some kind of “Big Oil Conspiracy”…. I can tell you that the collective consensus within my business will be “let the bastards freeze in the dark” when the big wail arises.

The oil industry has many problems of course, and their reputation for "Big Oil Conspiracies" is well deserved and based on their long and appalling history of market manipulation (which has set a bad example to other cartels and enemies of free trade for over a century). But its not like they are out there warning us about the problems that peak oil poses (Matthew Simmons and T Boone Pickens aside, both of whom are no doubt profiting from the surge in energy prices in any case).

In the meantime I think a few more governments should follow the British example and slap some "windfall profit" taxes on their local oil companies - maybe the money can pay for some much needed public transportation systems.