P.S. We may already have peaked.

Kenneth Deffeyes has a blurb in his book about how although he predicts a peak for Thanksgiving 2005 (or thereabouts), it's possible we may already have peaked.

Amusingly, if you look on the EIA's website, at page 333 of this PDF document [warning: the document is huge and takes a long time to load], you see some interesting figures:

World primary energy production by source, 1970-2002
Quadrillion btu

Year | Crude Oil | Total

..
1994 | 130.46 | 354.75
1995 | 133.32 | 363.84
1996 | 136.64 | 372.33
1997 | 140.52 | 380.26
1998 | 143.15 | 383.94
1999 | 140.79 | 384.77
2000 | 146.50 | 396.28
2001 | 145.25 | 403.33
2002 | 142.86 | 405.12 - Preliminary estimate

(Total = Coal + Natural Gas + Crude Oil + Natural Gas Liquids + Nuclear Electric + Hydroelectric + Geothermal and other)

Notice anything funny here?

Why is it that crude oil is apparently hitting a ceiling, while the overall total appears to be rising?

When you go look at the original table, you will see the other items broken out and see that the other hydrocarbons are in rising trends, while oil appears to be in a leveling off trend. And the fact that the overall total still rose suggests the crude oil figures might not have been due to economic contraction.

Uh oh.