[robsmith]

I don't understand why everyone is particularly concerned about the Peak Oil date as though we are OK until that happens. The real problem is estimating the future trajectory of the price of refined oil products. This depends not simply on the Peak Oil date but also on technology, the increasing challenges posed in drilling for oil in forbidding environments, and the rapidly expanding competition for oil, particularly from southern and eastern Asia.

With globalization, the internet, and other improved means of communication, this last factor may be the most important. Just why should producers of oil, and raw materials generally, sell them to us (the developed world) rather than to equally informed people who can give them greater amounts of manufactured goods in exchange because of their lower labor costs? (Because we have our armies rampaging around the world's greatest oil fields?)

Let's have some models of future oil product price trajectories assuming no major wars. That will give us a baseline for discussing future pressures on the world and the likely calamities to ensue.

[MrBill]

Without the underlying assumptions any price forecasts are meaningless.