Peak Oil

[Jonno]

Peak Oil is not simply a "total amount of oil in the ground". It includes the every increasing cost of extracting it (shale extraction is still very very expensive), the evironmental damage from that extraction and the overall impact to the global economy. 

PS.  It is also a media release just like all those media releases claiming that the next 2km of freeway is going to solve all our traffic congestion problems.

[somebody]

Alot of work to go before this reserve is proved up butassuming it does, its more evidence to bury the "Peak Oil" theory

You crack me up.

[ozbob]

Peak oil isn't dead; it just smells that way --> http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/take/peak-oil-isnt-dead-it-just-smells-that-way/963

[ozbob]

Rocket News --> New king of hybrids: Honda's new Fit Hybrid to boast a 85.6 mpg fuel efficiency level

[ozbob]

The Guardian --> Former BP geologist: peak oil is here and it will 'break economies'

[ozbob]

Melbourne Age --> Blinkered to threat of rising oil prices

Oil production in Australia peaked in 2000. It would have peaked worldwide too by now, had it not been for the shale oil boom in the US.

Some interesting work by this country's most unrelenting peak oil proponent, retired engineer Matt Mushalik, shows that without shale oil - which accounts for 1.5 million barrels a day - world oil production last year was back at 2005 levels. It seems a monumental economic crisis may have been averted.

Still, the price of crude oil has stubbornly hovered around its present mark of $US108 a barrel for the past three years even as shale oil production has ramped up.

For motorists in Australia, should consensus predictions of a falling Australian dollar come to pass, prices will head higher at the petrol pump in coming years.
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This currency effect, however, is a sideshow compared with the big question of world oil prices and production.

Thanks to the shale oil boom, the more alarmist cries of the peak oil brigade have been subdued. Even with advancing technology and ever more sophisticated extraction methods though, it is London to a brick that the price of crude oil will rise sharply in the longer term.

You would think then that peak oil might be factored in to major policy decisions about the future of the nation and its infrastructure.

Energy security is paramount.

But it is not so. In early 2012, then industry minister Kim Carr declined to table the federal government's peak oil report BITRE 117 before a Senate hearing on grounds that it was ''not up to scratch''.

Later that year, the energy white paper also failed to deliver an updated version. Research on oil, perhaps the most critical commodity for Australia's long-term security, has been abandoned.

As the Abbott government grapples with the tricky question of how to fund big projects ahead of public hearings on infrastructure next month, the question of oil prices is not even on the agenda.

Already, the bias of state and federal governments for roads over rail has been well documented. As oil is the most critical commodity in fuelling any transport option, you could be forgiven for thinking that it should be on the agenda ...

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/blinkered-to-threat-of-rising-oil-prices-20140316-34vh6.html

[ozbob]

Brisbanetimes --> Plummeting oil price explained in four graphs