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Right. Hydrocarbons, then. Natural gas and petroleum have similar geologic and economic characteristics.

• fleitz 13y ago
  I hate to break it to you but pretty much everything is a hydrocarbon. Natural gas and petroleum are about as similar as the hydrocarbons of corn and cherries.
  • gshubert17 13y ago
    Does natural gas exploration and exploitation have peak phenomena similar to petroleum? And does coal have its own reserves and peak phenomena? Coal, petroleum, and natural gas are three large categories of energy hydrocarbons. If gas is cheap relative to oil or coal, then at the margin, some users will shift to gas. Prices of energy hydrocarbons will be correlated, over the long term. Then, as coal, oil, and gas are all depleted (with their own separate peaks, perhaps), their prices will increase. Foods like corn which have many dependencies on low-priced energy (farm equipment, fertilizer, drying, and transport), will come under increasing upward price pressure. Corn is used in perhaps a quarter of food SKUs in American grocery stores, so won't a lot of food prices go up as energy prices go up, as a consequence of peak oil (or coal or gas)?