No, we have not. A few folks back in the 50's/60's predicted the US peak production would happen in the 70's and decline after that. Thats exactly what happened, but an emerging global infrastructure was maturing to take up the slack.

The predictions about total estimated planetary planetary reserves have been steady within 10%-25% for over 30 years, and has proven to be pretty accurate. The only unforseen fluctuation is how much of that amount is useable and extractable, which has changed significantly over 30 years. But petroleum extraction and refining is an old and mature technology, I think eventually the law of diminishing returns in these technologies has been reached or is close. I doubt were going to see any changes. I'm not holding my breath that Shale oil and Tar Sands are ever going to be useful.

The often smarmily said statement that "hurrumph! we have been running out of oil for 30 years" is (and I'm sorry to put it this way) an assinine hand-wave argument [and even if it WERE true, it has no bearing on the hard numbers that even the petroleum industry and OPEC generate and hold true]

There have consistently been outlying results from oddball methods, and there have been consistently media-misinterpretations of data that take apocalyptic stances that are unjustified.

"Unless we start doing more exploratory drilling, it seems unlikely that a lot more "proven reserves" will be found."

From what I understand, the slow-down in discovery has little to do with not doing exploratory drilling, and more to do with the fact that we have matured the technologies behind discovery and covered the areas of probable reserves pretty well.

Look, you can only get so far in life pinning everything on 'left wing intellectuals' and 'enviro-wackos'. Eventually you have to think without these crutches.

The trick is to allow the market to respond.

If you use a certain set of assumptions about improving refining (which contradicts some of my earlier arguments), then you actually do hit a cliff pretty hard, where you see a RAPID tapering off of production over a timeline as short as 10 years. Now THAT will be really bad, and I don't see how 'the free market' will respond.

The free market is a system vulnerable to catastrophy (market crashes, depressions), albeit it typically recovers. The market does not guarantee a non-catastrophic scenario, just that it can bounce back if the circumstances are there[*]. If we run out of gas, how are we to find the means of production to replace an infrastructure that we have spent 100 years building? We can burn coal, but.....

I guess the point is that 'faith in the free market' is just another handwave argument. Its saying that things will 'work out juuuus fine' without presenting any reasons why we should believe. It may very well 'work out', but so too might Jesus Christ come down form the sky and piss pure crude. The arguments are roughly equivalent.

Its very dubious that if the decline in production is sharp and quick that 100 years of oil infrastructure can be replaced and recapitalized when the very engine of production (energy) is scarce.

Also, the 'free market' is adding to the problem. OPEC has been acused, and reasonably so, of artificially stabilizing oil prices with their excess production to keep nation states from being 'incentivized' to switch to nuclear, coal or other. France, it seems, wasn't the only group of people who learned from the OPEC crisis of the 1970s.
Individual companies are consistently inflating their estimates of reserves they have access to to paint a good balance sheet.

Davin L.

* Also, ask a manual laborer in the 1890s through 1920s about the tender mercies of the free market.