this is not so much a question as an observation. Everyone says that we have passed peak on fossil fuels, but watching the major oil companies makes me doubt this. think about it, if an end to fossil fuels were imminent, wouldnt these major corporations be seeking other industries in related fields, such as alternative energy. these corporations should be at the frontier of alternative power if they think that their income is about to be cut down, and eventually disappear. they are some of the largest companies in the world, and have the greatest resources for research and development, as well as being best suited to implement the technology in the future. so if they saw an end to the age of fossil fuels, wouldnt they be seeking a future industry. this leads to the completely practical theory that they may be saying they have less supply to justify price increases. simple supply and demand.
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Fact is that the end of fossil fuel will come, just not anytime soon. The cost of fuel is driven up by futures and stock traders. The so called shortages are a way to artificially keep prices rising. The failure to open new markets to drilling comes from the NIMBY crowd and econazis.
Yeah, this sounds extreme. But, after all, I am a cynic. . .
Obviously some day we'll use up the oil--the population of the world doubles every xx years. We just don't know when peak oil was/will be.
But I believe that peak-oil won't have much affect on the price because it would usher the real introduction of competing technology. The peak-oil high-price arguments don't consider competition from other technologies.
It is a fact that as the price of oil goes up, the viability of electric cars, wind powered grids, alcohol-based fuels, hydrogen or any other alternative you can think of gets more logical and closer.
Compare the situation to the introduction of digital TVs. A couple of years ago, they didn't exist; now they're pretty-much the standard. The only reason we stayed with analog TVs so long was because the manufacturers kept the prices really low. If the price is the same, the barrel of oil will be as popular as a 4:3 analog TV.
The free market will keep the price of oil low until it's gone, because if the price goes high, it will be replaced. Their jobs depend on it.
There is an alternate fuel source under the ocean called methane hydrate. It's uncontrolled release would certainly destroy life as we know it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate
However, there is a clean source of fuel that provides more easily convertable energy in a year than all the combined sources of fuel on the Earth; the Sun. Additionally, the Sun provides a means of actively controlling our weather, in addition to providing clean energy.
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/jamesbdunn?p=224
Expensive? The entire system could have been built for less money than the war in Iraq. We could all have been benefiting from cheap and plentiful energy and enjoying diverse new job and product opportunities.
I agree that we will eventually deplete our oil reserves on this planet, but i disagree with the worry of any influence by the increasing population, it is growing at such a rate that we will have more people than the planet can feed in our current lifestyles before we have more people than energy. Also, my point is that the oil cartels are claiming price increase because of the decreasing amount of oil, when i think it is just an excuse, they say that they are paying more, when if you do your research you will find that they are simply selling it from one part of the coorporation to another, from their drilling company, to their shipping company, to their brokering company, to their refineries, to their distributors, and finally to the customers. So when you see only the mark-up at the distributor levels, it seems small, but they are making as many as 5 mark-ups within their own transactions. also, these companies are making more money than ever, increasing their profits by 20-60% per year in the last 4 years, when they claim that they are struggling. and when the senate sub-house committee says this, and says that they are going to recall their tax exemtions, they say that they will jack up the prices in response, this by any definition is raqueteering, and these people should be in jail.