Reply #13: Scientific American did an article on this a few years back.

[SlackJawedYokel]

The worlds oil decline is going to mimic the US oil decline of the late 60's/early 70's.
In fact, according to the model used, we're in the middle of the peak this year.
Basically there are some facts... we've found almost all of the drillable oil fields on the planet... and some assumptions... that oil drilling/pumping techology won't make any spectacular leaps in effeciency.
Right now most oil fields still contain oil... it's just difficult to get to and not as economically useful as lighter/sweeter crude, making it *less economically feasible*(ie., not as profitable) to pump it out.

What made the Iraqi oil fields irresistable to BushCo was that it's light sweet crude sitting near the surface... almost the best possible(most profitable) scenario for drilling/pumping.

IIRC, the model predicted that we had another 50 years of oil consumption at the rate we're going, given the current situations.
Not sure if they factored in China becoming more of an industrial power/fuel user, though.

The truly laughable part of all of this is that the limited life-span of the petro-fuel paradigm was *created* by those companies who benefitted from it the most when Big Oil and Big Auto conspired in the early and middle parts of the 20th century to dismantle the more economic urban mass-transit systems in place to remove competition for their individual people movers(and the oil/gas/tires to make them go).

My next vehicle purchase will be a hybrid and when a valid consumer alt-fuel vehicle becomes available, I'll get one of those.

Cletus