3 ms·

"Peak Oil" was originally about supply problems. The article reports, eventually, that the usage has shifted in recent years. What they say makes sense to me, b

"Peak Oil" was originally about supply problems. The article reports, eventually, that the usage has shifted in recent years. What they say makes sense to me, but I think the article would be better had they mentioned it sooner. The term “peak oil” didn’t always refer to demand. It started with the premise that the world’s supply of crude was finite. Eventually no matter how hard drillers tried, they wouldn’t be able to pull more oil out of the ground. A transportation crisis would ensue. The peak oil hypothesis dominated economic thinking for decades. But it turned out that with fracking, deep-water drilling, and oil sands, there’s a lot more oil than we once thought. More recently, the idea of a demand-driven peak took hold. Petrostates fear it, environmentalists pray for it.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> The term “peak oil” didn’t always refer to demand. It started with the premise that the world’s supply of crude was finite. Eventually no matter how hard drillers tried, they wouldn’t be able to pull more oil out of the ground This is false. The hypothesis was not that there was a hard limit on rate of extraction, but that the economics of extraction would result int a production peak due to what was economically profitably extractable. Demand was always a part of the consideration, though the original papers and predictions didn't so much consider decreasing demand due to new alternatives.
- foundart 6y ago
  Yes, the hypothesis was that as the supply of readily accessible oil dwindled, the economics of extracting the remaining oil would be prohibitive, so their quote is not perfect. On the other hand, a sentence that could be fixed by appending "in an economically feasible matter" to the end of it does not seem like a significant problem in a brief comment about what the term "peak oil" used to mean in an article that is all about a newer usage of it.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
    Well, it's becoming economically infeasible to extract oil not because the cost of extraction has increased, but because the cost of alternatives has decreased enough to reduce the price of oil. So it's still the case that oil production is peaking due to being too expensive.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> The term “peak oil” didn’t always refer to demand. It started with the premise that the world’s supply of crude was finite. Eventually no matter how hard drillers tried, they wouldn’t be able to pull more oil out of the ground This is false. The hypothesis was not that there was a hard limit on rate of extraction, but that the economics of extraction would result int a production peak due to what was economically profitably extractable. Demand was always a part of the consideration, though the original papers and predictions didn't so much consider decreasing demand due to new alternatives.

foundart 6y ago
Yes, the hypothesis was that as the supply of readily accessible oil dwindled, the economics of extracting the remaining oil would be prohibitive, so their quote is not perfect. On the other hand, a sentence that could be fixed by appending "in an economically feasible matter" to the end of it does not seem like a significant problem in a brief comment about what the term "peak oil" used to mean in an article that is all about a newer usage of it.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
  Well, it's becoming economically infeasible to extract oil not because the cost of extraction has increased, but because the cost of alternatives has decreased enough to reduce the price of oil. So it's still the case that oil production is peaking due to being too expensive.