Oil at $67?

Who knew that oil could possibly go this low? I'm sure that many in the peak oil community are a little shocked by this recent development in oil prices. I think we judge the credibility of informational sources by their predictive ability, and certainly 'peak oil' as concept has taken hit in the last few weeks especially. Looking at oil prices seems to bear that theory out, but looking at the larger context of the economy reveals a new wrinkle in the peak oil story.

I think the latest conceptual thinking of peak oil theory has been enumerated by John Michael Greer, who wrote "The Long Descent". It's a great work on peak oil, and somewhat of a departure from the norm of peak oil discourse.

The most important point that he makes is the idea of 'living through history -- that is, the human conception of time, and the truncated timelines of our history texts. This might sounds tangential to the topic of peak oil until we examine the narrative of the peak oil movement: collapse, disaster, starvation, famine, war, failed economy, etc. Not to say that these events won't happen, but we will probably be hard-pressed to link these disparate events back to the over-arching theme of peak oil.

Ultimately our experience, our lived experience will not be a sudden moment of calamity followed by an 'ah-ha' realization that peak oil is the man behind the curtain...rather we will experience decline, unyielding and progressive, followed by period of 'recovery' once again leading to decline. The slow parabolic unraveling of the 'western' mode of life.

To bring it back to the price of oil, why is oil at $67 a barrel, and still falling? We have perhaps entered one of the first of many 'minor calamities', the small disasters that will bleed western economies by 1,000 cuts. Its no mistake that oil hit $147 a barrel before it began its steady decline, we are likely to see each period of decline start out with rapidly inflating oil prices, as the recovery phase seems like it will restore the lost wealth and prestige of our economy. But this is an illusion, as the era of easy energy, and easy, cheap 'work' that it did for us are over. Now the true cost of oil will become more and more apparent before the economy sinks once again and oil prices are slashed along with falling demand.