Prime Minister has said that Obama wants to talk about the Alberta oil sands on his first visit to Canada.

http://ca.reuters.com/ article/ topNews/ idCATRE50D31220090114

As you can see, Harper is shameless, using environment and oil sands in the same sentence.

This is true, but the problem is exacerbated when one considers that the oil producing nations may not want to decrease their consumption in line with their decrease in production. They have growing domestic demand and (rightfully) feel that their populations should be able to benefit from the resource under their soil.

This means that as their production declines they will maintain their currently growing domestic demand by curtailing exports as necessary.

So a 2% drop in world production might mean a 3-5% (or more) decline in exports, and importing countries like the U.S. will be faces with a steeper declines in available oil than the actual decline in worldwide production rates.

Perhaps, ….

And that ever popular, perhaps not.

It seems that 50% of American driving is done using cars that are 5 years or less old.

Each PHEV that hits the road is expected to use about 25% as much oil as the ICE vehicle that it replaces. If we were to heavily sell PHEVs between now and 2015 (not an unreasonable assumption) we might reduce our personal vehicle oil consumption by a significant amount before peak.

And remember that commercial vehicles will likely move to PHEVs/BEVs more rapidly than will individuals. Businesses are generally pretty good with math.

At peak some have calculated a less than 2% drop per year in supply, not a cliff off which we plunge.

And we already have the infrastructure in place to recharge more PHEVs than we are likely to put in use for the next several years.

Good batteries and reasonable government support to help get prices down by getting manufacturing levels up and we could see lots of BEVs which would use 0% oil.

Do you know, is Obama going to by oil from Alberta?

Of course there is proposed coal to oil as a “bridge”. Ha! You don’t build a multibillion dollar plant and turn it off in 10 years. Not to mention having to take a few more mountain tops in W VA, VA, PA, KY, OH…

Or is that a draining sound?

They do of course have to face the reality of Peak Oil, but do they want to tell the truth about it or deny it (hitherto the preferred route)?

On one hand their stock prices and perceived credit-worthiness are so dependent on their claimed reserves and their prospects of discovering more.

On the other hand, if they want to persist as entities for any length of time through energy descent, they have to come up with a new business paln and sell it.

And then, the current low prices, almost certainly far too low relative to fundamentals, can’t be helping them any more than it’s helping the nationalized producers. So some of this public change of message may also be an attempt to goose the market by reminding people of supply realities.