by Jacob Silverman
"Peak oil" refers to the idea that at some point oil production will reach its maximum, after which it will enter a phase of decline. Although a tremendous amount of unrecovered oil still exists in the world, some oil, perhaps trillions of barrels, will remain out of reach of energy companies -- either because of the cost of production or because of engineering challenges. What's more, by the time we would be able to tap all of the world's oil supplies, we'd be so besieged by the effects of climate change -- itself brought on by burning fossil fuels like oil -- that producing more oil would only compound the world's problems.
As for when peak oil might be reached, that's less clear. Some contend that it's already happened, or that we'll reach peak oil in within the next 10 to 20 years [source: Lynch]. But for many experts, the much-prophesied moment of peak oil continues to be pushed farther down the road, as new extraction techniques continue to open up previously untappable reserves. And even now, well into the petroleum age, new oil deposits are occasionally found, while the sizes of others are often determined to be larger than originally estimated.
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It's not a question of when so much as who. Some countries have already reached peak oil. For example, U.S. oil production peaked in 1971 and has been dropping off ever since. Since worldwide oil production seems to have plateaued in 2005, some experts think the world has already peaked. Other predictions range from later this decade to later this century. It's impossible to tell exactly how much oil remains in the Earth, and we'll only be able to recognize the moment of peak oil in retrospect.
