‘Peak Oil’ and the oil crunch

Ali Ghalambor Image Credit: ifenergy.com

While some “doomers” talk of “peak oil” and “a life after petroleum,” majority in the oil industry still think that everything is just peaking right. The peak oil scenario—the hypothesis that the oil resources are not only on rapid decline but have already reached their peak—is fast gaining traction from sectors left and right.

The notion that humanity has already burned enough oil reserves that usually take millions of years to develop is seemingly plausible in some respect, but people verge away from the real issue—the current challenges to oil production that continues to slide down from easy to difficult.

Ali Ghalambor Image Credit: mnforsustain.org

In the past decades, oil reserves had become a potent powder keg of wars at various scales. As the world consumes millions of barrels of oil every day, the exponential rate of loss is truly staggering. No one can doubt that fact. Argument-wise, the avid advocates of alternative sources of energy are in fact standing in a solid ground. The global oil production is indeed at an all-time high as the world approaches closer to a more advanced stage of progress. Nonetheless, the real challenge is not the unfounded belief and fear on the “end of oil age” but the increasing difficulty on oil extraction at hostile territories that cost more money and resources to operate.

Ali Ghalambor Image Credit: khaama.com

Given the politics and economics of the oil industry, the world will never run out of oil; it will just run out of cheaper ways to extract more.


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