If 23 years were all that were really left, don't you think there would be a lot more development in nuclear, alternative energy around the world? Don't you think the gas companies would squeeze every last dollar out of those 23 years and hype it up to the total maximum?

Peak oil is a myth. Abiotic oil is the reality. The Saudi fields and other pockets are being replenished much like a magnified natural geyser by fissures which lead deep into the Earth where the oil is actually produced.

Yeah, heads spin here when I mention this, but it's almost certainly the truth. The depth at which oil is pumped is simply not deep enough to create it. So little is known about the insides of our planet, geology is still, mostly in the realm of mysticism and shamanism. Like guessing what's inside the pyramids, the oil guessing game is a lucrative industry and you don't make big money on the goop saying the supply will be, for all intents and purposes, endless.

We were supposed to run out of oil completely in 1990. Now, you come up with a figure of 2031. Both figures, and all other such figures are totally bogus. We will be drowning in the stuff for the foreseeable future.

The secret isn't HOW MUCH oil is there. There's PLENTY.

The secret is CONTROLLING the BEST ACCESS points to all this oil.

That's, in part, what our presence in Iraq provides - control and influence of a key access point.

The Saudi fields are some of the best in this regards. Why? We can speculate that the desert region and it's lack of soil moisture reduces pressure all over the surface of this pocket. So it refills faster than other spots where consumption exceeds the rate of flow along these fissures.

Statistical thermodynamic analysis has established clearly that hydrocarbon molecules which comprise petroleum require very high pressures for their spontaneous formation, comparable to the pressures required for the same of diamond. In that sense, hydrocarbon molecules are the high-pressure polymorphs of the reduced carbon system as is diamond of elemental carbon. Any notion which might suggest that hydrocarbon molecules spontaneously evolve in the regimes of temperature and pressure characterized by the near-surface of the Earth, which are the regimes of methane creation and hydrocarbon destruction, does not even deserve consideration.”

Professor Emmanuil B. Chekaliuk, at All-Union Conference on Petroleum and Petroleum Geology, Moscow, 1968.

I've quoted Chekaliuk before but it is worth repeating. The science behind Peak oil belongs, and can be found, on the very worst of conspiracy theorists sites which profit and thrive on engineered panic.

I'm glad Nick makes $2000 a day again hunting new fields. To be honest, that's still cheap for the potential profits made on new oil access points. He probably should make $5000 a day. Developing and accessing the planet's oil is not cheap. But this "oil crisis" is about geopolitics, money and control - not about a shortage of planetary oil.

I've looked at the science and the science, IMHO, favors abiotic oil and the presence of living organisms all along the hot oil fissures explaining the biological markers. It doesn't favor creation of oil this close to the surface based upon clusters of animals and plants dying in giant pockets. For me, it's as simple as that. Science wins.

Yeah, I can already see the heads spinning from here so I'll close up shop on this post.

;-)