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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> Some day peak oil  
> production will be reached, but most oil reserve estimates suggest  
> that there are good reasons to doubt that that day is now at hand.
> 

"Most" oil reserve estimates??   Not really.  

There are two sets of oil reserve estimates.  One is used by oil producing 
countries (especially OPEC) to determing sales and production quotas for the 
individual memebers of a cartel.  They are understandably fake.

The other set of oil reserve estimates are by geologists and they are much 
more conservative.  They point out the fact that the peak month for world oil 
production was December of 2005 and despite record prices and record demand, 
production has not risen.  OPEC has repeatedly in the past two years said it 
would raise production but when the time came, had some financial or 
political 
excuse why they "chose" not to.  A good number of geologists and 
petro-scientists 
have concluded that the reason they have not raised quotas is that they can't.

Today, as we live and breathe, the world is using 88 million barrels of oil a 
day and producing 85 (the other three come from storage).  

The oil industry has paid cheerleaders, much as the NAR has (and had) Lereah 
and Yun who for two years have said it is a great time to buy because the 
bottom is just around the corner (not making any more land, ya' know).  Much 
of 
the misinformation about abundant reserves comes from Cambridge Energy 
Research 
Associates' cheerleader Daniel Yergin who eighteen months ago said oil was so 
plentiful and there was so much reserve capacity that oil would drop to $30 a 
barrel and stay there for most of a decade.  Peakists make wicked fun of 
Yergin by making his name into a measure for oil prices, that is, today oil 
costs 
more than three Yergins a barrel.

I have no doubt that the gist of the article is true.  Hard economic times 
caused mainly by the housing crash will cause the price of fuel to drop due 
to 
less demand.  But the world capacity for producing oil has likely been 
reached 
and more and more people are recognizing that of late.  For example:

"After the CEO of Total (the French oil major) <A 
HREF="http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2007/11/1/7339/31806";>last week</A>,two 
more CEOs of an 
oil major came out this Thursday to give stark warnings that mean that peak 
oil is happening right now. In addition, the chief economist of the 
International Energy Agency (the IEA), one of the main cheerleaders of the 
"there's more 
than enough oil" camp until now, is giving an extraordinarily pessimistic 
interview in the Financial Times, following the recent publication of their 
latest 
World Energy Outlook."

Full article at:    www.theoildrum.com

Also note the article following this (or one or two down) which examines the 
unlikely accuracy of stated oil reserves.   </HTML>