America imported no oil from Venezuela last week.

[MRubio]

4. The expert? Please....

My dad always said that an expert is a guy who learns more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. LOL.

I'm most certainly NOT qualfied to comment on how fracking will affect Peak Oil.

I got out of the oilfield almost 20 years ago. IIRC, the Baakken was just making noise, and hydraulic fracturing was picking up steam as well. I seem to recall doing some work on some wells in North-central Louisiana that had been fracked by a small production company out of Houston, but the details escape me now. Those were some of the first I was exposed to.

After selling my company, I walked out the door and never looked back so I've not kept up on any of the fracking technology advancements, and most importantly, what types of reservoir rock and reservoir fluids lend themselves to fracking. Having said that, if the US is any indication of the additional production that can be achieved, I'd say, yes, peak oil has been pushed back at least 30 years. perhaps much more.

One thing I am certain of though is that, like Hubbert predicted, eventually all the "easy" oil will not only have been found, but will have been produced by the latest technology and when that day arrives, production worldwide will drop dramatically. It will be a terrible shock to world economies if they've not leveraged away from that one gallon of refined hydrocarbon liquid that can shove a 10,000 pound vehicle 20 miles down the road.