Why Policymakers Should Reject The IEA’s Silly Peak Oil Notions

In a statement published at the OPEC website Thursday, Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said the concept of “peak oil demand” is nowhere to be seen in the cartel’s projections for future global crude oil demand.

“[A]s we look to the future it is the very versatility of oil that ensures that we do not see peak oil demand on the horizon,” Al Ghais said, adding, “Just as peak oil supply has never transpired, predictions of peak oil demand are following a similar trend.”

In my own research, I’ve been able to trace predictions for the world reaching so-called “peak oil” all the way back to the 1880s. From that distant beginning through around 2010, peak oil theory was always about the world having somehow reached a peak in crude oil supply as all the big reserves had supposedly already been discovered. For about 125 years, constant advances in technology and a creative and innovative industry invariably proved such pronouncements wrong, often laughably so.

With the ramping-up of the climate alarmist movement across the first decade of this century, narratives surrounding this always wrong theory began to shift over to the demand side of the equation. Some anti-oil and gas activist groups even adopted the theory as a means of promoting the equally silly notion that the world’s remaining oil resources could simply be left in the ground as demand for them would be soon overwhelmed by rising demand for alternatives. A decade later, that theory has also been proven laughably wrong despite the “investment” of many trillions of dollars in debt-funded subsidies.

OPEC’s statement stands in stark contrast to the projection by the International Energy Agency that the world will somehow achieve peak oil demand by 2030. Al Ghais alludes to this preposterous notion, calling it a “dangerous commentary, especially for consumers,” that “will only lead to energy volatility on a potentially unprecedented scale.”