How I Came To Not Believe In Peak Oil & Peak Fossil Fuels (Production)

I was sitting in the Albert Hall in Brussels at the 9th International Association for Peak Oil (ASPO) Conference, April 2011. The theme was “European Energy Policy in an era of expensive energy”. An executive from the French energy company Total had come to speak about this new technology “fracking”, a technology that would postpone peak oil for a very long time. From the audience came what psychologists would call cognitive dissonance, the problem with dealing with new information that directly threatens a worldview in which much work and energy had been invested. For some time the “ASPO crowd” rejected this truth, including me for a while, but US oil and gas production just kept rising and fracking technology kept getting more cost effective. Yes, decline rates were much faster than conventional wells. Yes, the sweet spots with highest production would be drilled out first. Yes, it poisoned peoples wells and other water supplies with hydrocarbons and the chemical filth that was used. Yes, it caused small earthquakes. But nothing was able to stop it, including the US Clean Water Act from which it was exempted.

US Oil & Gas Production

• 2010: 5.5 million barrels per day; 61.8 billion cubic feet per day

• 2011: 5.7 Mbpd; 65 bcfpd

• 2012: 6.2 Mbpd; 66.4 bcfpd

• 2013: 7.5 Mbpd; 66.5 bcfpd

• 2014: 8.7 Mnpd; 70.7 bcfpd

• 2015: 9.4 Mbpd; 74.1 bcfpd

• 2016: 8.4 Mbpd; 79.7 bcfpd

• 2017: 9.3 Mbpd; 73.6 bcfpd

• 2018: 11 Mbpd; 83.8 bcfpd

• 2019: 12.3 Mbpd; 93.1 bcfpd

• 2020: 11.3 Mbpd; 116.1 bcfpd

• 2024: 13.3 Mbpd; 103.2 bcfpd

• 2025 (forecast): 13.5 Mbpd; 107.1 bcfpd (115-120 bcfpd forecast for 2030)

At the same time, Canadian Tar Sands oil production rose from 1.6 mbpd in 2010, to 2.4 mbpd in 2015, to 2.8 mbpd in 2020, to 3.5 mbpd forecast for 2025. Also, Qatar natural gas production exploded from 10 bcfpd in 2010, to 16.4 bcfpd in 2015, to 17 bcfpd in 2020 and 24 bcfpd forecast for 2030.

Global oil production has been maintained on a plateau from 2014 onwards. In 2025, OPEC+ is limiting oil supply as prices are below US$60 per barrel; which is the equivalent of US$40 in 2010. The only place natural gas prices have risen is in a Europe that saw the forced closure of the Groningen gas field in the Netherlands and then replaced cheap Russian pipeline gas with expensive US and Qatari LNG.

At the time that I was writing my 2014 book, “Energy & The Financial System”, I noted that coal still had a high energy return on investment (EROI) and therefore peak coal did not seem anytime soon. World coal production has been on a plateau since 2013, and prices, excluding the Ukraine War related supply interruptions, have been at or below the 2008 level. Chinese coal consumption actually rose above the previous 2013 peak in 2019 and continued to grow; only in 2025 may Chinese peak coal consumption be reached, with India possibly peaking in the same year. In 2024, world coal consumption grew by 1%; with India growing coal usage by 5%; with no coal shortage on the horizon.

The reduction in European and US coal consumption, that somewhat offset increases in other regions, is already heavily played out. The use of hard coal and brown coal in Europe has already dropped by 75% since 1990; there is just not that much left to cut. US coal consumption peaked in 2007 and has since dropped by over 60%; significantly due to the availability of cheap fracked natural gas (which is worse for climate change when fugitive methane emissions are taken into account). In 2024, China used about 92.2 exajoules of coal, India 23. Against that, the US usage of 7.9 pales. Indonesia used more coal (4.72) than fifth placed Japan (4.53), with Russia sixth (3.75). There may be a global fall in coal consumption in future years as the behemoth China moves more toward low carbon sources, but that will be due to government policies not any “peak coal”. In fact, there is currently a global coal supply surplus and falling prices.

There will be no “peak oil production”, most especially with the rapid electrification of personal and commercial vehicles in China and the less rapid progress in Europe. Even with the US removing any fiscal support for electric vehicles. There will certainly be no “peak fossil fuels production”. There are a few still hanging on to this thesis (cognitive dissonance can be very hard to overcome) but in the end theory must comply with conflicting empirical evidence.

Fracking, Tar Sands, Qatari natural gas production, coal bed methane production, and ever increasing coal production have allowed human civilization to keep on growing for the past 15 years; facilitating the rise of China to the point of directly challenging the US imperial world order. Ironically, China has been the greatest beneficiary of the increases in US and Canadian oil production increases. Without them, oil prices would have most definitely risen mightily and choked off global economic growth.

In 2025 we stand on the cusp of two paths, from which peak oil/fossil fuels will not save us. Slash fossil fuel consumption very rapidly and deal with the economic and financial consequences or face catastrophic climate change within a decade or two. I am old enough to be swanning off this Earth after a good life by the time the climate change shit truly hits the fan, people younger than myself will not be so lucky.

The US administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have chosen the “ignore or deny it” path. The Europeans have chosen the “collective hallucination and mild eco-modernist” path. The Chinese are quite quickly moving to the “wish for a good outcome with supercharged eco-modernism” path. The collective outcome of these three paths will be catastrophic climate change, mixed with extreme emergency geo-engineering attempts that may stave off the worst days of reckoning for a while. There will be no peak oil to force us to do what collectively we seem unable to do. I wish there had been, but as Craig Dilworth argued in 2009 we are just too smart for our own good; each time forcing ourselves down the same growth cul-de-sac by always coming up with new technology to keep the unsustainable going until it isn’t.