ABSTRACT
‘Peak oil’ has been understood to mean many different things. In July, the combination of the war in Lebanon, fears of a new hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico and a massive inflow of speculative money into commodities markets brought oil prices to a record level of $78 per barrel. Underlying that price rise was a perceived tightness in the oil supply-demand balance in a context of buoyant demand, notably from China. Peak oil will actually be the moment of maximum availability of oil - with problems to come only later. It is highly likely that we will know about the peak only after the fact, as notice several years of stagnant or declining production. The question of ‘when’ seems only to be debated within the ‘peak oil camp’, via semi-formal non-governmental organisations like the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and The Oil Drum.
