U.S. Domestic Oil Production Peaked 1970. Also

¶ … U.S. domestic oil production peaked 1970. Also global production, argued oil fell a high point 2005 74 million barrels/day, rebounded, 2011 figures show slightly higher levels production 2005 (EIA 2011).

'Peak oil:' When will we reach it? Does it matter?

The decline of total global supplies of available crude oil is an extremely controversial topic amongst environmental policy makers (Monbiot 2012). While U.S. domestic oil production peaked in 1970, there were various inaccurate predictions that world oil would peak at different points in the 1990s and early 2000s. However, in recent years "a new oil boom has begun. The constraints on oil supply over the past 10 years appear to have had more to do with money than geology. The low prices before 2003 had discouraged investors from developing difficult fields. The high prices of the past few years have changed that" and world oil production is soaring (Monbiot 2012).

This historical shift indicates the critical problem with calculating the likely level of world 'peak oil.' New sources of oil are still being discovered: regardless of whether the environmental cost of mining them is determined to outweigh the benefits, the resources are still considered to be part of global reserves by most nations. "In 2012, we have the information equivalent of the BP gulf of Mexico blowout. We now know the vast extent of the Marcellus Shale gas reserves and the Canadian oil sands and the Arctic reserves. We now know that there were trillions and trillions of barrels of oil in the geosynclinal trough from the Orinoco River to the Falkland Islands" (Kovarik 2012). Natural gas from fracking, so-called heavy oil from Venezuela and oil from Canada's tar sands all offer untapped resources for production. While some of these novel methods may not conform to the ways in which oil was harvested in the past, in terms of their functionality, they serve similar purposes -- they offer the power that can support the fossil fuel-run infrastructure of the industrial world as it currently stands, without forays into nonrenewable sources such as wind or solar technology.

It should be noted that many of these sources are extremely controversial, from an environmental standpoint, given the risks of fracking, worries about damage to natural resources and general concerns about the effects of unabated fossil fuels upon global warming. Still, because these new sources are non-renewable and apparently abundant there has been talk about 'the end' of the concept of peak oil. The once commonly-expressed idea that the Middle East houses two-thirds of the world's oil is clearly no longer the case (Kovarik 2012). "The new dynamics for the United States -- an increasingly intertwined energy relationship with Canada and more reliance on Brazil -- mean U.S. energy supplies are more assured than before, even if oil from an important Persian Gulf supplier is temporarily halted" (Center of gravity in the oil world shifts to the Americas, 2012, The Washington Post). Even within the U.S., shale oil, "high-quality crude trapped in rocks through which it doesn't flow naturally," is found in more abundance on North Dakota's Bakken shales than is conventional oil in Saudi Arabia (Monbiot 2012).