Help Jane, Stop This Crazy Thing!

One of the analogies that Boone Pickens likes to make relates back to when he worked in the oil industry: As an oil field got a little long in the tooth, you ended up on a treadmill of working harder and harder to try to keep production flat. Mr. Pickens believes that global oil production is now on exactly such a treadmill at around 85 million barrels a day.

Whether that ultimately proves to be to highest production figure, only the future will tell for sure, but the oil industry is certainly having a heck of a time these days, and looks an awful lot like George Jetson in the opening sequence of The Jetsons.

The latest:

Reuters: Dubai to take control of offshore oil resources.

Financial Times: BP shuts down Alaska oil field.