by TonyPrep » Thu 06 Dec 2007, 14:27:08
The peak will be later only if it hasn't happened, and the slowdown is rapid. If the peak has already happened, recession and depression cannot delay it but it may well result in another, lower, peak as demand resumes its upward path, eventually. If the economic slowdown is rapid, you may not much care that the technical peak is still years away.
However, I suppose this latter case may even bring the peak forward. Even in recession, there will still be a huge worldwide demand for oil and this lower, but large, demand, may result in a very long lower plateau (decades?), from which production may never again reach the heights we see now, due to depleted fields.
All this shows that the technical peak may not be that important now. The lack of production to meet demand is the more important factor and can result in rocketing prices even as production rises.
I think it's likely that a series of increasingly deep recessions, punctuated by shallow booms, will result from the supply problem. Whether societies can hold together depends, to some extent, on the reaction of people to the realisation that the party's over.