"The Peak Oil Crisis: Wall Street Comes To Reality" (in baby steps)

[JohnyCanuck]

New article in Wall Street Journal admits world about to face problems pumping enough oil to meet projected demand. The article talks about oil production reaching a plateau from where no further increases in production are possible. Still doesn't want to admit that it's not long after the plateau is reached that an actual decline in production will set in.

The Peak Oil Crisis: Wall Street Comes To Reality
Written by Tom Whipple
Thursday, 22 November 2007

SNIP

From time to time they would report some good news such as “billions of barrels found 25,000 ft under the Gulf” or “steaming out sticky oil will save us.” However, they never got around to asking what is involved in extracting oil from deepwater wells or just where all that tar-melting steam was coming from. Anyone who questioned that oil production could keep on growing for the foreseeable future was castigated as lunatic fringe.

This make-believe world finally came crashing down on Monday when the Wall Street Journal published a front-page story admitting there was a big, big problem with oil production just ahead. Now the flagship of economic journalism does not come to such a decision lightly. To admit that you have been dead wrong in ignoring the most important economic issue the world is likely to face in the next century certainly strains your journalistic credibility.

There must have been hours of agonized meetings in the offices of senior Journal editors as they hashed out just how to break the news that world oil production was about to peak without admitting that the world is arriving at peak oil.

The solution turned out to be rather ingenious. Write a story about a new kind of “plateauing oil” that has just been recognized while continuing to bash the old “peak oil.” Sophistry? Of course, but it enables the Journal to maintain that all-important face.

The title of the Journal’s story sets the stage “OIL OFFICIALS SEE LIMIT LOOMING ON PRODUCTION.” The first sentence carries the message “A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day.”

http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2123&Itemid=35