On Oil Supply, Opinions Aren’t Scarce

“We’re halfway through the hydrocarbon era,” my old friend T. Boone Pickens has been saying for the last couple of years. You may remember Mr. Pickens as the most famous corporate raider of the 1980’s, but he has spent his life in the oil patch.

A folksy line like Mr. Pickens’s – it sticks with you. But I hadn’t realized until recently that it also meant Mr. Pickens had taken sides in a surprisingly heated debate. He subscribes to what is being called the peak oil hypothesis, which holds that there simply isn’t very much new oil left to be found in the world. As a result, we are currently in the gradual process of draining the more than a trillion barrels of proven reserves that are still in the ground. And when it’s gone, it’s gone.

New York Times