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Comment by thewarrior | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think that peak oil has been truly debunked. Conventional oil production has indeed peaked and shale has come in to fill in the gap. However shale oil is a lot more expensive and this does propagate throughout the economy.

Right now oil prices are still at 75 dollars a barrel. That’s still much higher than before we hit peak conventional oil. It could be one reason we never really recovered from 2008.

It seems to me that we are stuck in an “oil price strait jacket”. Demand keeps rising until the price shoots up and then goes down hard but making a lot more oil isn’t feasible either. We could be in a long slow energy stagnation. This is evident in the amount oil imported into Europe for eg.

Shale oil has probably saved us from an outright disaster.

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This is like how peak wheat has not been truly debunked because we now have GMO wheat and novel agricultural practices.

Your answer makes no sense. There is no peak wheat, it's not a non-renewable resource.

The difference between peak oil and shale oil is the EROI which is very bad (between 1 and 2) compared to conventional (20 to 50). This would make it absolutely useless as an energy source, except we also get free Nat. gas out of it.

Once the EROI on all our fossil energy sources gets below 1 we won't be able to use any, despite some of it still being in the ground.

A better analogy than peak wheat would be: this is like peak fish except we now have better bottom trawling fishing nets, and electric pulse fishing to be able to get the last remaining fish out there.

Except it makes total sense. There is a clear transition happening to non oil energy sources. Oil is a fungible good with alternate energies for many applications. It makes no sense to talk about peak oil if oil demand will soon greatly lessen.

As technology increases with oil extraction and alternate energy sources come into play, the peak oil scenario will likely not be realized.

> There is a clear transition happening to non oil energy sources.

No transition. Energy usage is stacking up. Globally, renewable energy sources are built in addition to fossil energy sources. See source below - compare relative vs. absolute :

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...

Peak oil doesn't care that the relative share of oil as an energy source is decreasing (which is true) . It's the global number of oil barrels extracted out of the ground that matters.

Except if it was way more expensive than before.

Shale is not economically viable, regular oil is profitable at 10 dollars a barrel, shale needs 60 dollars or more. That is an extreme difference that we are not feeling because of massive amounts of credit pumped into the shale boom. Once the fake money dries up and the market prices that shale oil at its correct value you are in for a world of pain. Imagine the gas a the pump station going x6 and that affecting the rest of the economy. That is a world based on shale instead of conventional oil.

Shale is profitable because oil prices per barrel hit over 100$ in the 2000s. It's our answer to the OPEC oil cartel, and the reason they dumped all their oil for pennies on the dollar at the start of Covid - "This time we'll REALLY drive shale out of business and we can raise prices again in 5 years!!!"

Today from a cursory google, oil prices per barrel are over 70$.

Fortunately for our society we subsidized it to survive this brief period.

But we won't have 50 more years of complacent oil usage without alternatives. Oil at 75 dollars a barrel is expensive enough that renewables are profitable, so by the time supply becomes a problem and prices rise even more, renewables will be available in quantity to cover for it. Before, probably.

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