dozens if not hundreds

'Hundreds of years' of oil available

(Craig) Smith argued: "We currently have 1.28 trillion barrels of proven reserves, which are the highest in our history. And if, in fact, we are depleting the giant oil wells, how come the reserves are continuing to increase? … I just don't buy the theory that we're running out of oil."

While (Matt) Simmons agreed that the planet is not running out of oil, he insisted the industry is facing a peak production crisis. "The risk of running out of oil is miniscule," he said, "but the risk that we're peaking is a very real threat."

...

"The problem is," according to Smith, "if you believe that we are getting oil from decaying dinosaurs and debris from the forests then obviously there's only a finite supply. We don't embrace that. We believe that the earth is creating oil as we speak and that with technological advances and the ability to put human resources together with natural resources, and the wonderful capital markets we have here in America, we can get all the oil we need for dozens, if not hundreds of years to come."

Smith and co-author Jerome Corsi's interview last week on "Coast to Coast AM with George Noory," sent "Black Gold Stranglehold" racing up the charts to land at the No. 10 position on Amazon's non-fiction best-seller list.

Talking, and thinking about oil, or oil depletion, is hard. Most people are quite content to leave it to the experts. The problem then becomes, how does one choose their experts?

Right now, the concept of "Peak Oil" is not seriously in question as a driver for depletion of any individual oil field, ramblings of the "Black Gold Stranglehold" authors on abiotic oil aside.

Apply a Peak Oil depletion model to the World. Watch fast talkin' experts jump out of the woodwork to attack it, wielding Oil Shale and Hydrogen as if they were relics -- a silver cross, and holy water, to salve the ills of civilization.

Yergin. Lynch. St. Jerome. Birds of a feather.

That the arguments are rarely coherent matters little. Thoughtful people, observing the debate, can spend years making up their mind on an issue like this, and may prefer to wait and see the evidence.

We have years of cheap oil, if not dozens of years, if not hundreds of years, if not thousands of years. Holy Cripes! Did I just say a thousand years of cheap oil? What are you going to remember, reader?

Watch your step. Reality is in play.