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The Aramco CEO seems to think there may be a few more decades of economical oil production. Is that pretty much the industry consensus?

A few decades will pass before we know it. I’ve been on FR for almost 25 years and it feels like just yesterday I signed up. If peak oil happens in the timeframe they’re expecting, we really do need to get cracking on it.

My impression is that this realization is starting to take hold at pretty high levels. Just this past September there was a big summit where the US and several other countries announced a plan to triple nuclear energy capacity. Last summer Sweden announced a huge course correction way from wind & solar and towards nuclear which is now the focus of their national energy plan. A week or so ago Japan announced they were dropping their ban on new nuclear capacity. France recently announced they were greenlighting a dozen or so new nuclear plants. Poland is getting ready to build a new nuclear plant.

Maybe the problem is real enough and close enough that it’s starting to scare some realism into our decision makers.

I made a good living, though very uncertain, in the oil industry for just over 40 years. In that time I was involved in most of the upstream industry from all the field work including drilling to metering to pipelines to building huge offshore structures, financial analysis, marketing and the boardroom. I began my career during the oil embargo while we were running out of oil. With new higher prices we made old and neglected fields that were faltering revived then we went out and discovered more. Shale extended the production life again. We have been constantly running out of oil. Either increased prices or changed technology arrests the running out. It is really hard to say when it actually ends. I don't think anyone knows that but it does get harder and harder to recover and sustain production. Eventually we will not, the price will be too high and even though oil is being generated deep in the mantle that regeneration is too slow for our needs. Something like 65% of all oil discovered remains in the ground in fields that are now dead. Almost all the gas can be produced. One holy grail is figuring out how to make that now immobile oil, mobile. So you see, even when production ends there is still lots of oil in the ground.

We need comprehensive energy policy but we will never have it. Society, politics and politicians don't have the will, the ability or the consistency to ever accomplish a comprehensive, practical, feasible, long lasting energy policy and so, instead, we will rattle along lurching from one crisis to the next. Things could be so much better. Most of our angst and suffering is not necessary at all. If only I were king for a day. Sigh.