KingM wrote:I don't know if it will never happen, but I've been here since 2005, and things seem pretty much the same as they always were, if not more so. China's economy is SIX times bigger than it was in 2005. I remember someone mocking another poster some time around 2007 or 2008 when he bought a new car. Oil would soon be so scarce that the car would just sit in his garage.
I was moderately doomerish. I bought some gold when it was about 500/ounce. Not a bad return, although it hasn't budged much lately. I also kept kicking into retirement accounts, and these are worth a lot more than they were 12 years ago.
So what's going to change now, that didn't change back then? Twelve more years will be 2029. Even those of us who were more moderate were sure that there would be big, monumental changes by then. I'm not sure I see it anymore. Seems like a more likely event is BAU.
As one of those who has mostly been in the Moderate wing of resource depletion beliefs I can agree with much of what you wrote. On the other hand having participated here nearly daily since April 2005 I can see that many things have changed a lot in oil production and consumption over the last 12.5 years. As you pointed out yourself China is now the worlds top oil importing nation because their economy expanded by leaps and bounds over the last 20 years. It really started booming when they got permanent most favored trading nation status with laws that encouraged US manufacturers to move our industrial capacity to China in wholesale fashion.
Right now India is in the first couple years of going through the same kind of growth pattern and from all reports this time the government has decided they want growth at any cost because they feel they are being left behind by China and that scares the daylights out of them. The impression I have gotten, which is just my impression so it may be totally wrong, is that India used to count on the USA as the 'world policeman' to protect them from any incursions by China. This trust has been completely lost over the last decade and at the same time the people of India see the people of China living at a much higher standard of living than they were just a decade ago, let alone in 1997. The combination of fear above and pressure from below has set India on a growth at all costs pathway much like the one which overtook China starting in 1998 with Permanent Normal Trade Relation status. As a result India is imitating the path China took, they are developing their internal coal mine capacity rapidly and building new electric power stations as quickly as they can integrate them into the system.
There are even a few hints that hydroelectricity projects which have been stalled for decades in the far north of India may soon regain the political support needed to proceed. India in the north has a lot of mountains with streams and rivers that could provide a lot of hydroelectricity. These projects were stalled by NIMBY local populations that saw the process as hurting them for the benefit of some nameless bureaucracy running the power grid and the protestors managed to delay or even get cancelled many projects in the north. Now India is committed to growth for the sake of standard of living and national defense and this changes the kind of deals the politicians are willing to offer local protestors to get them to accept the new dam infrastructure and distribution construction.
So in conclusion, the rapid expansion of India will put additional demand by over a Billion new consumers into the mix of world resources, so world demand is going to keep going up. The rate of increase in world supply will be hard pressed to go up by as much as it has in the last decade for another decade into the future. Because of the nature of Shale bed oil it looks unlikely that resources will be able to double yet again from where it was in 2015. That makes it very questionable that we could see a world peak much higher than 100 MM/bbl/d though i used to think the same thing about 90 MM/bbl/d before the "shale miracle" took place.