With Peak Oil alone, one can see that the topic continues to lose popular interest,

However if we were to look at Russia and the equivalent plot to the Saudi and OPEC one, we find:

Which shows, if one looks at the scales on the sides, that there is even less interest in those topics, despite the tightening grip that Moscow (and Gazprom in particular) is starting to establish on European fossil fuel supplies.

Given the more general nature of the job, it's not therefore unsurprising that my current boss is not that familiar with the topic. And so one of my first thoughts was to reprise, in a short report, some of the information that has flowed across the site recently. But in the land where a two-page memo is too long, conveying a sense of concern without being overly dramatic is not particularly simple.

And then, of course, there is the question itself! Are we really heading into the maelstrom, or will it be a more gentle transition that most will survive. Stuart will tell you that I tend to be a bit pessimistic on this one. And I wasn't much convinced toward changing my mind after listening to Matt Simmons as he excoriated the CERA Report on Financial Sense Online (thanks for the tip David Shvartsman). But one thing he said towards the end of the talk is worth casting out as an object of discussion. He anticipates that, much as the American Space Race was initiated following Sputnik, so there is some event coming that will trigger a major energy effort in the U.S. He did not know what it would be, and so I throw this out for nominations.

And since this is a post with some updating of graphs on it, let me close with the current EIA gasoline plots since the first of these is giving Matt some concern. Here are the plots, starting with the current state of gas stocks

followed by the current level of production.

the current levels of imports

and the current state of gasoline demand in the U.S.

I hope that you all had a Happy Thanksgiving, as we did, though I was surprised at how empty the airports were, at the time we had, perforce, to visit them.