........I don't subscribe to 'peak oil'.
You probably should subscibe to it kewl cat. The key is to look at it by producing basin then basins within a producing entity (or country). The thing that kicked us out a bit on the curve was the deep-water Gulf of Mexico that was unobtainable by early technology when the "King Hubbert" curve was out. Also....those deepwater GOM reserves postponed the increase in oil prices by about 2-4 years. The reservoirs there are tremendously productive, requiring few wells and producing what is in the ground very quickly. The downside....they fall off after, say, 6-8 years, so there needs to be more development but the lead time can be 10 years.
For oil, reserves are somewhat lognormally related in a bbls/acre-ft relationship....just an inescapable physcial fact of life. Normal, uninterrupted production, after some time of sustainable rate, falls off in exponential, hyperbolic or harmonic declines. No doubt at some point that shale oil will provide oil for us....but at a seriously high price. We'lll need to develop coal & nuclear power in the short term to keep us warm at an affordable price....the government needs to invest in research for fusion power, efficient solar cells (something better than 14-28% and that last more then 8-11 years at 2x the cost of grid electricity)...it's gonna take a huge effort to do this...something like the WWII A-bomb project. Oh yeah, ethanol...without subsidies...still can't compete with crude oil and gasoline....do ya'll not think that if more money could be made on methanol the oil companies wouldn't be selling it? Buying a farm versus putting down a million dollar plus well every 40 acres or so and paying the landowner a couple of hundred a year per acre plus the 20% off the top to the royalty owner...well you should get the picture the oil companies could buy the farms to produce ethanol if it were truly a going concern.
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