 | The high potential of plug-in hybrids | The Oil Drum: Europe | Fatih Birol Presents the IEA World Energy Outlook 2007 |  |
93 comments on IEA: oil demand has surpassed supply
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
93 comments on IEA: oil demand has surpassed supply
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Personnel
Editors
Contributors
Peak Oil Primers
Archives
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
Vital Trivia
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
That is an alternative hypothesis, and time will tell. However, the extent of investment in new projects is not presently consistent with your hypothesis. It is more consistent with the hypothesis that as new oil becomes more costly to find and develop, the investments will become fewer and farther between, thus delaying the onset of new flows to < the flows lost to depletion.
Even without some sort of hyper development regime, it is not at all self-evident that the global, all-time production distribution is going to be symmetric around the peak. After all, in the past the world GDP and demand was significantly lower at the same time as big finds were easy. Now we are going to have to shrink demand by force, while no more large fields are available. World population and demand are not going to reverse in the future in a mirror image of the past. More likely is that there will be massive inertia trying to keep the status quo, leading to a catastrophic transition. Who knows, maybe magical new power sources will show up and save the day but until then, oil, gas and coal are going to be exploited (gas and coal will delay the crash).