Bewolf

The principle behind peak oil is not just reserves in total, but also accesibility, refinary ressources and demand.

1. First of all, there is an absolute amount of oil still left. It's not "refilled". So no matter what, it "will" run out eventually, maybe sooner, maybe later. There is nothing going around this at all. How much left is another question.

2. What is more important though when does it become profitable to explore those oilfields that are harder to come by, when does it make sense to work with oil sands and comparable ressources. When it comes to these measure, yes, we will have oil for a couple more decades to come, but it will get more and more expensive for the simple reasons that ressources to get to that oil is becoming more expensive. The arctic and some other regions may still house some suprises to be discovered, but it just prolongs the ineviteable.

3. China, India and a lot more countries reach higher and higher industrial levels and such higher and higher demand. This means that even if we find more ressources, and are able to maintin and even raise oil production, it still means it will become more expensive as demand will for sure be higher. We'd have to discover, explore and invest in huge areas to keep the odds even. Given that since the 80ies no new and easily acessible major oilfield was discovered, I doubt that will happen.

4. The last couple years, also due to raising oil prices, the oil industry completly neglected refinery capacity and missed investments into the infrastructure. Hurricane katarina amplified that problem in the US. The lack of these capacities means, that even if more oil is found and it's possible to get it, there won't be enough ressources to make it into useable gas ann other products. Rebuilding and investing would take at least a decade before they could go into production. Given the fragile future of the whole oil market, making these investments is a high risk.

5. Interestingly enough the peak oil theory was always fought by the companies, never advertised. Cuz that would have ment, in it's logical conclusion, that alternative energy ressources would have to be found. oil companies are not stupid. They know that asking for higher prices has to stop somewhere, else they will lose their profit because folks will develop something else for the energy problem. I dare to say, had the industry come up with this theory themselves, earlier, we'd not have the problems right now. So it's not reasonable to assume it was this industry inventing peak oil. Thse guys certainly want to prevent any altrnatives as long they can milk the cow, which is understandable in my book.