My Peak Oil Prognostications

If you don't know what 'peak oil' is, I'd suggest you start researching it right away. I've been talking about peak oil for about a decade now; when I first started sharing this information most 'ordinary' Americans brushed me off, dismissed my researches out of hand. Even now there is tremendous allegiance to some notion that Americans have a right to unlimited cheap oil to fuel their vast appetite for driving.

However, this post is about my peak oil predictions for the next couple of years. (All prices are given in 2008 dollars; inflation is going to get spectacularly tough if I'm correct about these gas prices, & thus the nominal prices in 2009, 2010, 2011, & 2012 dollars may be even higher.)

I foresee $4.00 a gallon gasoline (nationwide average) by the time the election rolls around in November 2008.

My conservative estimate for 2009 average national gas price is a mere $5.00 per gallon; but my more realistic expectation is that gasoline will have a nationwide price of $7.00 per gallon by the end of 2009.

By the end of 2010, I fully expect to see at least $10 per gallon gasoline across the country.

By the end of 2012 I'm betting that America (& virtually every other country on the planet) will be dealing with $20.00 per gallon gasoline, possibly even $30 or more per gallon.

There it is. I'm on the record.

Finite Mineral Fuels

I'd like to offer some reframing on the issues of global energy production. This blog will simply define & offer some small discussion of the concept of 'finite mineral fuels'.

I tend to think it's more useful to think of petroleum, coal, uranium, & even natural gas as finite mineral fuels. (While realizing that natural gas is not technically a mineral.)

These finite mineral fuels are just that -- finite. Limited. Non-renewable. Once dug out of the ground & burned, they are gone. & those that are biogenically sourced (coal, petroleum, & natural gas) are never to be replaced in our lifetimes.

But even uranium is a finite mineral fuel. While we can, theoretically, continue to mine uranium from other parts of our solar system, we are many decades from that being a practical solution to our appetite for energy.

Many people (& more every day) are familiarizing themselves with the concept of peak oil, the idea that petroleum products are a finite resource with a rather predictable pattern of extraction. We might want to start thinking of 'peak natural gas', 'peak uranium', yes, even 'peak coal'. Or we might want to think of them all as simply finite mineral fuels.