Peak Oil died for me the day that one of Canada's top fund managers used the squeezing of an orange to demonstrate the concept in front of a his investors. Many were oil executives who had dutifully done the "right thing" by putting their small oil fortunes under his care. Since the fund was paying for dinner, I didn't want to make a ruckus but I did sheepishly raise my hand and ask "what about natural gas?". Natural gas abundance was driving down prices and it didn't seem unreasonable that a similar shift might happen for oil.
The passage of time has shown that the theory of peak oil is not very predictive. Useful theories are predictive. Fear mongering dystopian technocrats are often wrong but the human brain is wired to pay attention to threats. I think we can shelve worries about energy supply for the forseable future.
I'm getting a little worked up about the subject Is Peak Oil Dead? because it is the title of my keynote presentation at the Calgary Energy & Resource Investment Conference 2013 on this coming Friday and Saturday (April 5-6, 2013).
In many of my recent talks I've been giving a shout out to George Mitchell, if you don't know who he is by now, I'd encourage you to Google him. He eventually made a fortune from his efforts. Check out the time lines and see how long it took for the oil industry to catch on to the shale revolution.
Here are two articles for your consideration (out of the hundreds I scan every day).
Axis of Ennui - The boring old oil and gas engineers have transformed the global balance of power. HELL YA they really did!!! This gave me goosebumps.
Coverage of the amazing shift to energy abundance was dwarfed by massive misinformation campaigns about fracking. Lately there has been a noticeable change in media coverage. The shale revolution will be televised but through a backwards looking lens.
From a stock picking perspective, my call of several years ago to "stand aside" on most energy stocks still holds. Most of us aren't smart enough to pick winners in a sideways to bearish market.
