Over the past two weeks I’ve taken the time to read over a new, 68 page Peak Oil report from Paul Sankey at Deutsche Bank (DB), entitled, The Peak Oil Market. What’s notable about this report is its holistic, comprehensive treatment of the global oil system as a moving and dynamic interplay between supply, demand, and technological mitigation.

With the exception of some work done over the years at Goldman Sachs (GS), I don’t believe I’ve seen such an aggressive confrontation of this difficult subject from any of the other major investment houses. Indeed, most of the comprehensive work done in this area tends to still come from the scholarly community. What’s eye-opening is that Sankey appears to accept that the peak of Non-OPEC production is now in place, that a final peak of global production will arrive sometime in the 2015 period, and, he is offering this viewpoint to the mainstream investment community. Generally, this is a community that remains ignorant of–if not dispositionally hostile to–oil and energy depletion issues.