I don't know when people finally admitted that US peaked in 1970 - and probably still some don't think that is case.

I predict that Newt Gingrich will run for President in the upcoming cycle, and a key part of his platform will be his plan to guide US oil production back to the previous highs. He will use two arguments. First, he'll explain that the decline in US oil production was a multi-decade policy failure in which we "outsourced our oil demand along with everything else." He'll make a broader point that across the globe many production profiles are the result of policy, not geology. If he's feeling especially frisky, he may even use examples like Russia, or even Nigeria and Venezuela. His second argument will be a deployment of an argumentum ad ignorantiam strategy. He will cite USGS total OOIP estimates for "everything within our control." He will then go on to jackhammer away at the idea that we "just don't know how much we'll discover, once we start." My guess is that, bar an Orlovian Slope of Dysfunction outcome fully in play, two years from now, that this strategy will play quite well with the public. After all, argumentum ad ignorantiam was already used to great success in the rationale for the Iraq War vis a vis "Saddam's WMD".

Newt will understand also that he won't be proven incorrect, even while in office, given extraction timelines. That is of course holy grail stuff in political math: being able to sell that which you you will only be expected to partially deliver.

I'm very excited about the 2012 election. In the background I expect MX exports to be pretty close to zero, for total North American crude oil production to have fallen well below 10 Mb/day, and for a discussion of selected peaks in other countries to be underway. That will be a fertile environment for political "sales." Especially when you consider that the current administration has decided to solve the liquid fuels problem via a massive new investment in car companies, roads, cars, and biofuels and also by addressing emissions from the power grid. Fun times.

G

Nate -- A few (management mostly) in the industry have always understood the declining status of the big picture of US declining reserves. I can promise that the vast majority at the technical level have had little interest in the exact numbers. I can include myself in that group for the most part. Not that we don't understand the production base but we just didn't and still don't care. You can imagine that if you were tasked with finding new oil/NG reserves for the last 25 years or so it would pretty difficult to escape the obvious. Easily 90% of us are focused on the small game...the day to day effort. Not that we don't understand the big picture but it has no bearing to us on the immediate goal: add reserves in a cost effective manner.

One somewhat annoying set of comments on TOD regards what "the industry knows", what the "industry does", what the "industry conspires", what the "industry is planning", etc, etc. The "industry" doesn't engage in any of these activities. The industry doesn't do anything. I understand it's convenient to use such collective terminology in our conversation but it tends to grossly misrepresent what I witness daily. It's no different then when someone characterizes TOD as a group that thinks this way or believes one way or the other. At worse such usage offers a basis for positions which are far from realistic. The simplest example is the focus on the press releases of the management of public oil companies. Many here understand the true purpose of those statements: say whatever is legal in order to pump up enthusiasm for the company's stock. It is not to educate folks on the real nature of PO. Unfortunately, many folks believe these words represent what the "industry thinks or believes". Such beliefs only cloud the discussions. I do appreciate the skeptical attitude many view the statement from industry insiders. Some are, at best, misleading while others are outright dishonest. But lumping us all together as the "industry" will cause the loss of valuable insight. Not a really serious rant but something to bear in mind as we forward and are increasing bombarded by what the “industry” has to say.

People will "agree" when shortages appear, sans reasonable explanation from pols etc. Your average Tom Dick and Harry doesn't care about the decline in LSC - they don't know what it is, or what it portends; if they do they feel assured that the oil companies are on the job, even though they have a vague disgust for them. On the other wing of the political spectrum people believe Al Gore's promises that we can simply replace all FF usage in 10 years if pushed/so inclined. This is all crude mythologizing instead of anything approaching reasonable analysis, and it's all we'll get right up to the end.

On declines: I found this article in the January 2002 edition of the AAPG's Explorer bulletin, by Steven A. Pfiefer, a Merril Lynch analyst: 2002 Outlook Brighter Interesting chart of natural decline rates - eyeballing it the median appears close to 9%, just as the IEA concluded last year.