Alan,
I think you raise an extremely important point here. HL works well not only with a steady rate of technological advances, it works fine also with steady rates of reserve growth, steady rates of market-induced improvements in efficiency, and for that matter steady rates of improvement in government policies, if only we had them . . . :-(.

The fundamentals of Hubbert's thinking are stunningly simple. The objections to the theory, however, (as I see it) are based on a misunderstanding or outright denial of these fundamentals:
1. There is a fixed amount of oil in the ground, and for the sake of discussion I'll throw in natural-gas liquids, oilsands, biofuels and even shale.
2. First we got the easy oil, mostly from giant and supergiant oil fields. The easy oil is gone and will never return, regardless of technological advances.
3. The oil that remains is increasingly expensive to extract, despite technological advances.

I do believe in the importance of technological advances and in the power of the market to mitigate somewhat the increasing scarcity and cost of oil. But no combination of technological advances and market-driven re-allocations of resources is going to spare us great and long-lasting pain resulting from Peak Oil. Therefore, we need proposals such as yours--policies and plans based on long-proven technologies, because the implementation of your ideas would provide significant mitigation of the negative effects of peak oil.

Most major Private Oil Companies (POC's) are making two basic arguments: (1) Technology will save us and (2) POC's can do a much better job of exploring for and producing oil than the National Oil Companies (NOC's).

It's interesting to see how the POC's did in two regions that were developed by POC's, with virtually no restrictions on drilling: Texas and the North Sea.

Texas peaked in 1972. The North Sea peaked in 1999. In both cases, the initial production declines corresponded to generally rising oil prices.

Texas has shown a long term decline rate of about 4% per year, the North Sea about 4.5% per year (crude + condensate). And this is with the best available technology.

Saudi Arabia is now declining at about the same stage of depletion that Texas started declining (around 55% or so depleted, based on HL), and the world is now declining at about the same stage that the North Sea started declining (around 50% depleted, based on HL).

And like Texas and the North Sea, the initial Saudi and world declines are occurring against a backdrop of generally rising oil prices.

And yet, many major oil companies still assert that they can provide virtually limitless oil. You know, a polite person would call this misleading. A less polite person would call it fraudulent.