Warren Buffett: Peak Oil Apostle ?  

CNBC has an interview with Warren Buffett in which he seems to be admitting a belief in reasonably imminent peak oil.

BUFFETT: Well, ag commodities are a little tough. You know, if I had to on--where ag commodities would be three years from now, up or down, I wouldn't know which way to bet. But they look like they've had quite a run. But if you take something like oil, I mean, we have been sticking straws in the ground now since, what, Titusville in 1850-something with Colonel Drake. And we have--we have--we have found a lot of the oil that's to be found. And if we're going to produce--or use 85 million barrels a day now and the rest of the world probably is going to increase its demand in the--in the--in the next five or 10 years, we're going to have--we're going to have a tough time maintaining production that satisfies those at this price, even. So I think something like oil, six and a half million humans--or six and a half billion humans are going to use a lot more oil than a lot fewer used 20 years ago or 30 years ago.

KERNEN: So that goes for metals, too? You're saying things that we can grow, we can grow more of. But things that are in the ground are...

BUFFETT: Well, we--yeah, we're using--my son is turning out considerably more bushels of corn or soybeans per acre than 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. So land can get more productive. But oil is finite. There's actually some school that says it isn't, but I think it's pretty finite. And, you know, we have 500,000 producing oil wells in the United States. The average production is 11 barrels a day. Five hundred thousand times we've actually hit. But if you look at our production vs. 30 years ago, it's way down. And most, you know, most fields are depleting at a pretty good rate. And with demand--if demand grows a million or a million and a half barrels a day from year to year and the present fields deplete and we don't find the elephants in the future...

QUINTANILLA: Well, with that in mind, some of the biggest bets, Warren, that get talked about on this show are from the likes of Boone Pickens, who says that he likes wind. Or it's the tar sands or it's a play on water here at GE. When it comes to energy, is there a next generation play, an alternative play that at least has caught your eye?

BUFFETT: Well, we're using more and more wind. We have a big energy company and--for example, in Iowa, we have a lot of wind farms and we're going to have more. So sure, the world is going to attempt to do that, but that is--that is not a big answer to the kind of energy demand that--that's coming along. So I think we've got to do everything we can in alternative areas, but I don't--I do not see that as a cure-all at all.