Cheap gas until the election?

Recent hype can’t disprove peak oil

I filled my tank with gas for $1.89 a gallon last week. Some station in your area might be even cheaper. But there’s no question that the cost of gas is down across the country these days.

Then there’s more good news for drivers: Earlier this month, Chevron and a couple other oil companies announced that they found a mammoth oil field deep under the Gulf of Mexico promising a domestic source of oil for years to come.

This summer, with gas at historic highs, it was easy to believe that America might be running out of cheap oil. The theory of peak oil started to spread. The theory says that world oil production is about to reach its highest possible level and then begin an unstoppable decline just as China and India start to compete with us for the remaining oil.

But oh, how soon we forget.

“Peak-oil theory is garbage as far as we’re concerned,” said Robert W. Esser, a director of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, in response to the discovery by Chevron and its partners, known as Jack No. 2. His group predicts that world oil and natural gas liquids capacity could expand by up to 25 percent by 2015.

Augusta Free Press