Define “peak oil”.
Peak Oil = Peak Gullibility = Peak Stupidity
I’ll define it for ya so this article will make sense...
Forget the environmentalist’s definition of peak oil.
Peak oil is when we reach a point where oil exploration and production is no longer flexible enough to adjust perfectly with oil demand.
In otherwords, pure capitalism is no longer in play in the oil industry. there is a rigidity imposed on the markets that resists flexibility in supply. Lots of things contribute. Let me attempt to list the culprits:
1. environmentalists’ restrictions on energy development
2. taxes
3. regulation
4. oil cartels (ie OPEC)
5. cap and trade
6. subsidized renewable energy
7. tyrannical totalitarian mismanagement of third world oil resources
8. Energy producer nations and energy consumer nations are increasingly mutually exclusive groups.
9. corruption
10. loss of confidence in the US $dollar
You have asked a legitimate question. And since most of the responses on this thread are wrong, I thought I might offer something else. I also invite you to do your own research. Use your favorite search engine and try something like "Hubbert Peak Oil."
But in a nutshell, "Hubbert's peak" or "peak oil" is simply a term to describe the observation that in any hydrocarbon producing region, the production curve from first discovery to final depletion has a "bell curve" shape.
That is to say that production in any basin starts from zero (prior to the first discovery), rises to some peak value and then falls to zero (over time, could have a long tail) as the fields deplete. Note that the only assumption in the above is that the recoverable pool of oil in the basin is finite.
In the original formulation, Hubbert, a Shell geologist made quantitative estimates of the time between first discovery, peak production and the ultimate final decline. But the basic premise of the theory is as obvious as the conclusions reached from "Laffer's Curve" about the effect of tax rates on government revenues.
The theory is obviously true for any given basin. It is therefore also true for all the basins in any region in aggregate (again the only assumption is that the resource is finite).
Hubbert was originally making predictions about production the United States. As it turned out his quantitative prediction for the US was pretty good.
Note that whether the world in total is at Peak Oil today is a question separate from the validity of Hubbert's theory.
Oh, and by the way, the fellow posting about oil being generated continuously in the center of the earth is a crank. But, to be fair, he is the only one with a logical argument against Hubbert's theory. He just happens to be wrong.