Letter to the editor, issue 81

I read with interest your article on Peak Oil in the most recent Energy Forum, and would like to provide some additional reflections on this subject. Primarily, the trends in oil (and gas) continue to surprise the majority of experts in the energy sector. Our industry is still unable to design a model that can explain what has actually occurred during the many years in which the Peak Oil debate has intensified, but failed to materialise. There are at least two reasons for this, one being we simply can’t model human creativity and that we are unable to predict major events and their consequences; just two major examples that most modellers did not see coming – the fall of the wall and the attendant collapse of supply from Russia (and its rise) and the rise of China.