The 85 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.

From the most recent data (2002 through March 2012)

The plateau is more clear if you smooth out the data
(average in several month intervals) to remove the month-to-month small scale fluctuations

This flattening has lead to a gap between supply and demand that can in no way be made up fast enough without the sudden appearance of new refining capacity. This new refining capacity has now been added and has come ON line over the past few months. The net results is that there is an additional 2-3 MBD now on the market since January 2010. Whooppee all that effort and expense for a measly 3% increase in production. We truly are clueless.

This gap could be seen coming a long time ago:
Two estimates of World 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)

Which Scenario should we bet on?

	mystery scenario