The 84 Million Barrels Per Day Problem

The reason that "Peak Oil" is really "Plateau Oil" is because our worldwide infrastructure supports the processing of 84 million barrels a day and we have now approached that.

This is plainly seen in the data

This flattening has lead to a gap between supply and demand that can in no way be made up fast enough with the sudden appearance of new refining capacity.

By now most everyone acknowledges that world wide oil distribution is refinery limited.

From The Qauari Energy Minister: Nov 2007:

To increase by 500,000 or one million barrels, do you believe today it will bring back the price?" Attiyah asked. "I don't think so," he said, emphasizing his view that the price of oil had become almost wholly decoupled from supplies. (THIS IS SIGNIFICANT)

Now technically it looks like there will be an increase in refining capacity in the year 2010 and this will remain a qualitative statement that will misrepresent the problem. The truth is that refining capacity is only going to increase by 1-2% which has very little impact in the supply and demand world.

Which Scenario should we bet on?