Fewer people than ever are searching Google for the phrase “peak oil,” while “too much oil” searches are increasing, according to a chart published Monday by Bloomberg.
“Too much oil” began outstripping “peak oil” in late 2015. “As interest in shale-led supply peaks, then naturally interest in the old concern of ‘Peak Oil’ has all but disappeared after the surge in focus on this during the mid-2000s,” Oswald Clint and Mark Tabrett, analysts for the energy research group Bernstein, told Bloomberg.
RIP peak oil. https://t.co/Ol30X8bj9D pic.twitter.com/pMFEIqseAa
— Tracy Alloway (@tracyalloway) September 12, 2016
Peak oil theories began when academics assumed the supply of oil would inevitably decline in the mid- to late-2000s. The theory hit the mainstream on Earth Day 1970, when ecologist Kenneth Watt famously predicted the world would run out of oil. “You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
Numerous academics like Watt predicted that American oil production would soon peak and then gradually decline, likely causing a global economic meltdown. However, the successful application of massive hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and other new drilling technologies caused American oil production to come roaring back to a 40-year high. There is currently too much oil on the market.
American reserves of crude oil and natural gas have risen for six consecutive years, despite the U.S. producing more oil and natural gas than any other country. Oil production last year was 80 percent higher than it was in 2008. The U.S. produced an average of about 9.3 million barrels of crude oil per day in June. The U.S. surpassed Russia’s oil production early last year as the world’s largest and fastest-growing producer of oil and natural gas.
America even controls the world’s largest untapped oil reserve, the Green River Formation in Colorado. This formation contains up to three trillion barrels of untapped oil shale, half of which may be recoverable. That’s five and a half times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. This single formation could contain more oil than the rest of the world’s proven reserves combined.
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Andrew Follett is a contributer for the Daily Caller. This content was provided by the Daily Caller News Foundation