[SoldierDad]

Some analysts believe that investors who have swallowed the peak oil theory are pricing oil higher because they fear the world is running out of crude and permanent shortages are nigh.

The fact that these investors are making huge profits from their manipulation of that alledged fear of shortage somehow always gets ignored.

[Thebaddog]

How much oil in the ground is a closely guarded secret. Oil companies only tell part of the story, IMHO.

[R W Reactionairy]

Some analysts might have figured out [if they had thought about it] that speculative shorts who sold crude oil contracts against the fundamentally driven primary trend because they did not believe in peak oil panicked and bought at any price leading to more rapid price rises over the short term than would otherwise have occurred.

To paraphrase JP Morgan [the man not the Company] the “price of crude oil will fluctuate” over the near term. Longer term, it isn't getting any easier to find, the national oil companies that have it belong to governments that don't like us, and the rewards of a restricted supply are clearly evident to to those national oil companies. You don't need to believe in peak oil [I do but it is not a requirement] to believe that higher prices are in our future.

BTW, the perceived risk of much lower crude oil prices [based on the belief that peak oil is a myth] is part of the reason that the alternatives aren't attracting the investment that they should. Who would make a multi billion dollar capital investment if they believed it could be rendered worthless based on a whim by a goof ball in Venezuela or Saudi Arabia?