[Daniel Doom]

Some of the most up to date research on the current and near future state of oil production is embodied in the report "Oil from a Critical Raw Material Perspective" produced by the Geological Survey of Finland and published on 12/22/2019. The full 510 page pdf can be downloaded here: http://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/70_2019.pdf

If you don't have time to plow through 510 pages, you can find a concise review-cum-summary of the report at this site:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8848 ... a-meltdown

The Finnish report takes a few potshots at the peak oil community, yet at the same time confirms that its forecasts were essentially correct.

Quotes from the review: The report was produced as an internal research exercise for the Finnish government, which until 2019 held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
SNIP
The peer-reviewed report calls for the European Commission to consider oil as the world’s most important "critical raw material." Despite offering a scathing critique of conventional peak oil theory, the report arrives at the shock conclusion that the economic viability of the entire global oil market could come undone within the next few years.
SNIP
As a result of this combination of geological challenges and above-ground market constraints, Michaux’s government study warns that a global peak in total oil production is either “imminent” over the next few years, or may already have happened, possibly in November 2018. But we will only be able to fully confirm the peak around five years after the fact.
SNIP
By 2040, this means the world would need to replace over four times the current crude oil output of Saudi Arabia, just to keep output consistently flat.
SNIP
Currently, the bulk of continued expansion in global supply is dependent on the United States. With the US shale sector on the verge of breakdown, the report warns that the “window of oil market viability is closing, which suggests the resumption of the 2008 correction will be soon.”
SNIP
Levels of global debt are now thoroughly out of control, the report says—finding that US government debt creation has been approximately twice the rate of economic growth over the last 40 years. By increasing the volume of debt, countries were able to maintain growth as costs of energy went up. As a result, most national economies now have debt to GDP ratio exceeding 90 percent, which means that they need to go further into debt just to keep their economies functioning while maintaining debt repayments.

Growth in GDP therefore amounts to a “debt fueled mirage,” according to the report. As we have not properly planned for the possible phasing out of fossil fuel energy, it is entirely possible that as energy systems, oil in particular, come to contract, we could witness “the peak of industrial output per capita sometime in the next few years.”

Reminds me of this song: "Turn out the lights, the party's over. They say that all good things must end. Call it a night, the party's over." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoQZ0qmf-mk

tic-toc, tic-toc, the count down is on.

[asg70]

Duplicate. Already digested here. It's just regurgitated perma-doomerism.

[shortonoil]

Duplicate. Already digested here. It's just regurgitated perma-doomerism.

Duplicate regurgitated garbage from the half brained idiot.

Growth in GDP therefore amounts to a “debt fueled mirage,” according to the report. As we have not properly planned for the possible phasing out of fossil fuel energy, it is entirely possible that as energy systems, oil in particular, come to contract, we could witness “the peak of industrial output per capita sometime in the next few years.”

We will witness the peak in industrial output this year. China has closed for business. The existing debt load will make a restart impossible.

[Daniel Doom]

We will witness the peak in industrial output this year. China has closed for business. The existing debt load will make a restart impossible.

Maybe, but I think another round of growth is likely in the middle 2020's when US demographics turn favorable. A peak in total liquid fuels is not necessarily accompanied by an immediate economic contraction (the initial response might be increased conservation rather than an immediate reduction in demand for end-user products), and the next supply crisis will not necessarily be indicative of the all time peak. Much higher prices might elicit increased production before liquid fuels make their final all time peak. What I know for sure is that peak demand will not be the result of switching to alternatives, like switching to bronze before we ran out of flint and obsidian. Real and permanent supply constraints are coming, but we will only know the exact timing by gazing in the rear view mirror. I don't know what's wrong with these people who deny the obvious. Maybe they are paid trolls who are trying to prevent a panic (the politico-economic-cultural elites are perennially fixated on this scary fantasy that we great unwashed masses will turn into a mindless, unpredictable mob at the drop of a hat);
or maybe the energy optimists (Simonites we could call them, after the late, self-deluded Julian Simon) simply have some cognitive impairment, such as diminished frontal lobe capacity. What is coming is so obvious that an average child can understand it, but some people, if they have not been seeded in the media and online forums for the express purpose of sowing doubt and confusion, have complexified the matter in their own minds to the point where they can believe the mathematically impossible. Unless the laws of physics have been repealed, our way of life is rapidly approaching an end, or as a physicist might say, a phase transition. Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo all understood that the end of industrial growth was inevitable, but today's economists are so narrowly focused on understanding the workings of endlessly expandable fiat money that they have utterly lost sight of the physical world and its limitations which the classical economists always kept in mind