I am a sometimes Peak Oil believer
A peak oil definition by Jason Brent goes like this
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“Peak oil can be defined in two ways— The first way is when total amount of oil withdrawn from the earth for use by humanity starts to decline; example— in year one 100 barrels of oil are withdrawn, in year two 120 barrels of oil are withdrawn, in year three 80 barrels of oil are withdrawn, and in year four 60 barrels are drawn – in this example year two is the peak oil year since in years subsequent to year two the amount of oil withdrawn goes down: The second way is when oil withdrawn per capita starts to decrease; example in year one 100 barrels of oil are withdrawn and there are 100 people on the Earth (one barrel per person), in year two 150 barrels of oil are withdrawn and there are 120 people on the Earth (1.25 barrels per person), and in year three 200 barrels of oil are withdrawn but the population has increased to 500 people (0.4 barrels per person)— in this example the peak oil year is year two as the amount of oil withdrawn per capita has reached its maximum in year two and has decreased in year three.”
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In plain talk it means there is not enough cheap oil readily available to keep running civilization the way we have been running it.
For the moment I am leaning away from Peak Oil although I think that it is generally a pretty plausible theory.
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I am going to have faith (just for today)that the Saudi’s really have as much oil in their oil fields as they say they do.
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That tar sands in Venezuela and Canada mixed in with emerging technologies should give humanity at least 20 years to get it together.
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On the other hand I believe oil is going to up in price not due to supply and demand but due to weakening currencies,speculation and collapse of the fiat money system.