I also wrote to David Smith - he believes CERA and OPEC. He would be extremely surprised if production did not increase as EIA predict. TOD are amateurs and doom-mongers, therefore no credibility.

I find his sort of arrogance irritating, but the fact that he is influential makes things worse. He does not have a good grasp of energy detail, but then with attitudes like his, how could he?

I have stopped bothering to write to him.

Heh, Heh, he must of gotten sick of Peakists over the last 2 years.

The Independent Story (for all its technical faults) is basically a gauntlet. A challenge to the BP Statistical review.

Its out now, and that is something.

Maybe time for some serious media discourse now.

Headline was a bit grabby, but thats what headlines are supposed to do. It grabbed everybody at work today.

He might believe CERA and OPEC (while ignoring CERA's complete and utter blunder on the natural gas production peak in the US). But if you notice CERA (Yergin, in particular) are off on a biofuels/ethanol jag and others like Lynch (SEER) have been pretty quiet (seems like their "back to $30/barrel by the end of 2004" didn't quite work out).

What's really interesting is that some "doubters" keep arguing the fact that the 1997 Science artcle by Campbell and Laherrere the graphic shows a peak occurring in 2004 (although the article says sometime before 2010) and that Campbell was "wrong," once again.

They have a little difficulty when I point out the peak production for oil + condensate is the month of May 2005 (with December 2005 coming in a very close second) and according to my calendar it's now June 2007. So, what does it matter that the article shows a possible peak in 2004 and it occurred in 2005? Let the economists find the oil.

As I point out, there is a very easy way to prove that peak production has not occurred...six consecutive months of production of crude and condensate greater than 74.2 million BPD.

As for the EIA, the other day I finally got around to running a Hubbert Linearization on the EIA's reference case (which only goes to 2035), That curve takes a complete bender from the current H-L curve(since 1982) that is "aimed" at 2200 GB URR, and heads off "aimed" (2006-2035) at 4400 GB URR.

But if Smith believes the EIA, then he must also believe in the "collapse" that the EIA has routinely shown in their curves once the peak arrives (since the total area under the curve constrains the total production and the EIA has selected a R/P of 10 after the peak) as they have attempted to dismiss the possibility of a near-term peak. If Smith thinks that a drop of 55 MMBPD over a five year period is no problem, then he might wish to explain how thas going to be "no problem."

It's totally understandable. Why bother people with a problem that they (and you, as the responsible reporting agency) are unprepared to address.