The Oil Drum: $100 a Barrel Quickens the Beat

After the price of oil hit $100, I checked in with The Oil Drum, a Web-based community founded a couple of years ago to discuss energy and the future. The folks who gather at the Oil Drum, by and large, agree that we’re at or near “peak oil”


You can also read postings on why the denial of an energy crisis is a conditioned response. And there’s peak-oil humor, as when a cartoon of a smiling pitcher serving up Kool-Aid accompanies one of the many examinations of the predictions of Cambridge Energy Resource Associates (CERA), the widely respected oil industry consulting firm, which has often issued assurances that petroleum supplies are adequate and that prices would ease.

I spoke with one of the Oil Drum’s editors, Nate Hagens, who worked at Salomon Brothers, Lehman Brothers, and ran a hedge fund (“I traded commodities but was oblivious to the greater energy picture”) until about four years ago, when he read several books about resource depletion that persuaded him to change paths. He quit the finance world and is now finishing up his Ph.D. in natural resources at the University of Vermont.

The Oil Drum averages about 40,000 page views a day, but Hagens says traffic is, “as you might guess, highly correlated with the price of oil.” He says, “It’s interesting