If this is correct we are in for major price increases 2014-15 as Hubberts Curve comes into play. I am thinking technology and innovations will extend this, but the question becomes for how long. Seems we may be in on the sweet spot on oil prices rising over the next few years. As soon as there is noticeable move to the downside on Hubberts Curve futures will reflect this and the prices will spike.
Skrebowski sees rising costs outrunning the ability of economies to adapt to higher oil prices by 2014, producing an “economically determined peak” in oil production. After that point, prices will remain economically destructive, and render sustained economic growth impossible. At the same time, it will make new oil production harder to finance.
This matches well with numerous analyses of oil supply that project a major tipping point around 2014 – 2015. At that point, as I have reminded readers repeatedly, we will likely begin down the back of Hubbert’s Curve and see net losses in global oil supply every year.
“Unless and until adaptive responses are large and fast enough to constrain the upward trend of oil prices, the primary adaptive response will be periodic economic crashes of a magnitude that depresses oil consumption and oil prices,” Skrebowski concludes. “These have the effect of shifting consumption from incumbent consumers — the advanced economies — to the new consumers in the developing economies.”
As I detailed last month (” Oil demand shift: Asia takes over “) that is precisely what has been happening since 2005. The world’s emerging markets are buying their first cars and their first trucking fleets, and those vehicles have much better fuel economy than ours. They will be able to pay a price for oil that we cannot tolerate. From 2015 on into the future, fuel will become increasingly unaffordable for U.S. drivers.
