World Oil Production Outlook, by David Archibald.

Peak oil was supposed to have arrived a decade ago, but then the US tight oil boom spoiled the party.

“Tight oil” is oil in impermeable shale and limestone rocks, extracted by fracking. It is an almost exclusively US phenomenon due to a combination of geology, drilling costs and taxation regime.

The figure above combines historic production levels from the BP annual energy report with a projection to 2030. …

It is evident from the chart that the world would have been in deficit for the last ten years if it weren’t for US tight oil production. If tight oil production goes back to its level prior to the virus-caused crash, there will still be a 10 to 20 million barrel per day shortfall of production by the end of the decade relative to the established demand trend line …

The days of cheap oil are nearly over. A tightening oil market will cause the LNG price to go to the oil price in energy content terms. The next big buffer will be coal to synthetic fuel which requires US120/bbl to provide a return. But oil will be at that price soon enough.

Very plausible. Peak oil is a mathematical certainty sometime. Although we thought it was going to be in 2006, fracking has pushed it back a couple of decades.