Is there a painless way to deal with the oil supply issue?

Clipping

Introduction I have been writing on oil supply issues since 1995, in particular the imminent supply gap and the looming new energy era; forecasting a peak in global oil supply arriving between 2010 and 2020 depending on demand growth. The Energyfiles report Oil & Gas – Global Ten-Year Projection (now in its 2007 edition) was published in response to queries about the data used to arrive at these conclusions. Nonetheless, despite new evidence in the form of higher than expected demand, capacity squeezes and price rises, there remains a view amongst some geologists and economists that the peak is many years away and even that technology, new energy sources, and new efficiencies will make it irrelevant. Although I believe such views are largely driven by wishful thinking, not scientific analysis of data, I do not want to digress on this subject here. It is unrealistic to expect a reader to believe one or other view (except the one he or she already holds) without properly comparing conflicting data analyses. Instead I want to address energy supplies after peak; the size of the so-called supply gap and how it might - or might not - be filled by alternative transport fuels and by efficiencies. This article is about potential production rates and uses the Energyfiles databases to establish history matches and forecasts, based wherever possible, on thousands of bottom-up field and basin production profiles.