http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=101057

Now we are being told that there is not enough steel, workforce, or money to continue increasing oil production.  There seems to be a lot of resources in Dubai, but we will leave that, and allow me to play through my issue here,  that being a true understanding of the use of the term "Peak Oil".

Let us take a sample oil field, it doesn't matter where.  It is reasonably simple in construction, take if you like East Texas in the U.S. or Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.  You find it, you study it, you estimate it's reserves in place, you drill it.  Now, as you drill, you find out more how it behaves, you learn reservior pressures, and you get an even better idea of it's size and composition.  You adjust your early numbers, and look at what is ultimately recoverable and how much will someday be left in place, because you can never get the last drop.
A good geologist (a Colin Campbell or a M. King Hubbert) can give you a pretty good estimate of total quantity, and calculate depletion rate, and know that at half of Qauntity, the production will begin to fall.  In fact, sooner in many cases, if you do not introduce technology.  That technology has been mostly directional drilling, and the mother of all recovery methods, water injection.

But that only speeds the depletion, so if beginning point of drilling was year 1, and original halfway was year 50, with the field trailing off to almost year 1 production by year 100,  the introduction of water injection pushes production so that half way point moves to year 25, and the field trails down to year one production by year 75.  These numbers are of course examples only, and give a somewhat expected progression.

NOW, HERE IS THE IMPORTANT POINT:  This is not, repeat NOT a logistical problem.  You can keep adding drills, manpower, money, etc., and you will only speed the depletion, AND the production will NEVER COME BACK UP TO YEAR 50. Once you have drank a half a mug of beer, you will never get more than a half a mug out of that one (you can search for new mugs, but that one is over half gone!)  That is my understanding of Peak Oil.

Is it possible that our French friend is misunderstanding the term?
Remember, he is talking about new projects.  Is he talking about completely new fields?  Because if he is, THOSE FIELDS CANNOT HAVE REACHED PEAK INDIVIDUALLY.  Now, if there are not enough of them being found to cover the depletion rate world wide, that's a different issue, AND DECIDEDLY NOT a logistical, money, manpower, or machinery issue.  

And here's the clincher:  If he is talking about enough oil recoverable to match or exceed the depletion rate being out there, and just needing the investment to get it, then it is a logistical problem.

 But if he is saying "the oil's out there" but then saying the discovery rate is not matching the depletion rate, then for all practical purposes the oil is DECIDEDLY NOT out there in the needed volume.  He is simply incorrect.  There may be trillions of barrels, but what we need to know is this:  If you had 10%  more money, manpower, machinery, would oil production go up 10%?  If you had 20% more, would oil production go up 10%?  IF YOU HAD TWICE AS MUCH MONEY, MANPOWER, AND MACHINERY, HOW MUCH WOULD OIL PRODUCTION RISE?

Because that will set the definition:  On the day the oil people can shake their head and say, "I don't care if you gave me a thousand times more money, manpower, and machinery, the total production of crude oil will never be higher than it is today."  THAT IS TRUE GEOLOGICAL PEAK.

Right now, the public is very, very suspicious of the words of oil companies and governments.  The confused language, back tracking, mixed terms, and back biting by the industry assures us one thing:  almost no one is buying into the Peak Oil idea because even those who use the term use it in so many contradictory ways.