The amount of oil (in the sense of liquid fossil fuels in today's infrastructure) in terms of energy provided/availability for non-oil producers will essentially be in decline from this point, and will never increase, regardless of the effort thrown into it. In fact, this effort will mark one of the major drivers of the downward trend - more energy used for less energy returned is a pithy way to look at my personal understanding of peak.

Notice, this does not include facts in the rigorous sense of projects coming on-line, depletion rates, or future developments (would humanity be stupid enough to keep using fossil fuels after clear evidence of climate change - are we smarter than yeast?).

It does include various disparate elements in a wide view - increasing geostrategic positioning, leading to a decrease in oil available for other uses, for example, or a focus on increased infrastructure being built to keep up with inevitable production declines. Or a mad scramble to keep oil flowing, regardless of the costs (look at the various jet fuel shortages in the U.S. and England to see how a shortage rapidly leads to inefficiencies like trucking jet fuel instead of using a pipeline). Or more ominously, end games involving destruction of oil facilities (see Nigeria, or Iraq).

This displacement means less oil available for what today is considered normal.

We are at peak, regardless of whether production moves up a touch, bumps along, or has started to inevitably slide down. Also regardless of how much fuel costs.

And no, I don't have anything backing it up but an opinion that from roughly this point, we go down the slope. We will never have as much energy available from oil as now, broadly enough defined ('now' is a few months, not a few years). Everything from this point will be a game of musical chairs, and though how long the music plays between chairs being taken away is open, all the players seem to have understood the basic rules.

Of course, if you read something from company sources about abiotic oil, or secret Nazi plans discovered in an attic, or that overlooked Soviet secret field with 68GB URR, then I guess my opinion was wrong.

And if we as a species are dumb enough to use climate change to take advantage of finally exploiting the fossil fuels around both Poles, then we deserve what happens to us.

I think the sense of infinite possibilities is most likely to be at peak, as there is nothing blocking our view in any direction.