Oil - We are here

The Oil Situation Is Really Bad

Fears of Panic, Cassandra's Fate

Outside of American pressure, why does the IEA issue reassuring forecasts? Allow me to quote from an extraordinary piece by the Guardian's Madeleine Bunting called Too fearful to publicize peak oil reality.

It is very hard for the average person in the street to come to a sensible conclusion on peak oil. It's a subject that prompts a passionate polarization of views. The peak oilists sometimes sound like those extraordinary Christians with sandwich boards proclaiming that the end of the world is nigh. In contrast, the the international economic establishment – including the International Energy Authority (IEA) – has one very clear purpose in mind at all times: don't panic. Their mission seems to be focused on keeping jittery markets calm…

Faced with these options the majority of people shrug their shoulders in confusion and ignore the trickle of whistleblowers, industry insiders and careful analysts who
have been warning of the imminent decline in oil for over a decade now.

Remember the Queen's question – that uncannily accurate and strikingly obvious question she put to economists at the London School of Economics a year ago after the financial crisis: did no one see it coming? Apply that question to peak oil and the answer is that many people did see it coming but they were marginalized, bullied into silence and the evidence was buried in the small print.

Please read full at ASPO

Also see front page report in The Guardian tells us that "Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower."

And
Top 10 Euphemisms for Peak Oil
10. TEOTWAWKI
9. End of cheap-and-easy-to-extract oil
8. Oil dependency and depletion
7. TSHTF
6. Our energy challenge
5. Oil demand destruction
4. Energy transition
3. Global peak and decline in oil production
2. Foreign oil dependency
1. Elimination of spare petroleum production capacity