Quote Originally Posted by Aenlic
Current consumption world-wide is about 25 billion barrels per year.
This number is likely a bit low, because there are various things being put on an oil equivalent basis (including the reserves.) There are so many factors I won't claim to understand a number of them, but I can see the forest for the trees. It depends also on what you couple it with.

Current production and use is at ~84 million bbl/day for a total of 30.7 billion bbl/yr. Growth over the past 20 years has been about 2% (this is used in various estimates...although it is often more like 1.6% actual.) Demand picks up when the world economy is strong, and flattens out when the economy is weak.

That is how I predicted the extended rise in prices by the way...it was elementary economic principles. We were emerging from a downturn so the industry numbers based on recent downturn influenced past were obviously bogus. Any one with the ability to read cyclic charts should have been able to see it. It was hilarious, I wish I still had all those reports now. They were all wishful thinking crap or worse yet, telling the gullible customers exactly what they wanted to hear. Doesn't mean I could get managers to listen...they think more like your average conservative in this forum, no I'm not kidding.

The true independent experts who study this have pointed out that the appropriate limitation estimates are *geological* and that tech reaches its limits.