Another perspective on peak oil

KM: Yesterday I spent some time with Jeff Rubin, who is the former chief economist of CIBC [World Markets], on a big book talking about peak oil [ Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization ]. What is your view on peak oil? Have we hit it or is it an illusion?

AW:It’s an excellent question. There is

If you want to look at, for instance, natural gas in Canada, then we’ve actually been in decline since early 2000-01; we’re actually in declining production. So it depends on which hydrocarbon you’re looking at and what kind of basin you’re looking at physically.

Economic peak oil is trying to identify what price can you maintain production in a given basin. Put another way, if you spend enough money you can actually start increasing production. But again, it gets very, very expensive. So in the case of oil in Canada, we actually are going to be able to increase production of oil in Canada. So we are certainly not in peak oil in the Canadian sense.

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