[Alter Kaker]

This is good news. It means oil is a renewable resource.

No it doesn't. On the contrary, it indicates that oil isn't a renewable resource. No one has suggested a method for rapid oil formation --- without question we are burning it much faster than it is being created, if indeed it is being created.

[gcruse]

We may be burning it faster than it is being created, but that does not rule out oil being renewable. That just means it is being replaced slower than we are using it. Renewable, yes. Inexhaustable, no.

[ARCADIA]

without question we are burning it much faster than it is being created, if indeed it is being created.

The sun generates plenty of energy every day to keep us going until extinction. Enough of this is being stored to provide us with usable fuel sources; oil is just one of an infinite number of chemical alternatives. We can change to something else whenever we want to; it is just a question of making a transition. One of these days we are going to get bored with the 100-year-old piston put-put and develop something totally new with alot more Zoom!

[JasonC]

Horsefeathers. Nobody has any idea how fast it is being created. And measured reserves have never gone down, since records have been kept.

[TaxRelief]

...without question we are burning it much faster than it is being created, if indeed it is being created.

What is your basis for that assumption?

[festus]

No one has suggested a method for rapid oil formation ---

Actually they have suggested that. Not necessarily in this article. Not being in the mood to argue about it feel free to research it on your own.

[calex59]

We have oil wells that have refilled, at least partially. The gulf coast has oil seeping from very deep sources continually. I suggest you read the book "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil,". Some oil wells have partially refilled in as little as 10 to 20 years. The theory is that oil is manufactured at great depths, and there is ample proof of this, and seeps back into some oil wells .

[hinckley buzzard]

The best argument I know against the "dead dinosaur" hypothesis is the sheer volume of oil--not just oil pumped from wells but the oil locked in oil shale, in tar sands, left in underproducing or unprofitable fields--trillions of barrels of the stuff. And at all different geologic features and widely varying depths which make no sense if one assumes the stuff is the debris of rotting reptiles from the same geologic era.

If you add up all the known oil, regardless of its recoverability under current price structures, we have just scratched the surface. While we may have a shortage at $20/barrel, at $60/barrel Canada has as much oil as Saudi Arabia. At $100/barrel, North America alone has enough oil for the next century.

"Peak oil" indeed.