Thinking About Oil

For the past few years, I’ve been thinking that I should invest a little money into alternative energy companies. Partly because I want them to succeed, and wouldn’t mind helping fund them, a little, and partly because I figured at some point oil prices are going to take off, and alternative energy will become big.

Well, I didn’t take that idea anywhere. A few months ago, a friend of mine was telling me about his latest research hobby, which was to try to analyze “peak oil”, whatever that was, and try to draw conclusions about what investments to make. Hmmm, interesting project. One day I was over at his house, and started flipping through some of the books he checked out from the library on peak oil. I checked out a few for myself, and got hooked.

I was just a kid when the energy crisis of the 70's hit, and it worried me quite a bit. The crisis went away, but I've always wondered how things have progressed. A number of books on the market now are quite alarmist, stating that we are hitting the point of peak oil production, and the future may be dire.

So here are some of the questions I want to ask.

· What is the future of oil production? Is it keeping up with demand? Is it peaking, or has it peaked? What happens after it peaks?
· What happens to our society when there is not enough oil?
· What sort of energy policies should our society be pursuing?
· What should we be doing as individuals?


The books I read, of course, gave their answers to those questions. I always like to draw my own conclusions, and want to use this blog as a forum for that. I won’t limit myself to the energy field, but that’s where I’ll start.