The most attention-grabbing attempts to predict oil futures have come from geologists and environmental activists, who tend to look solely at production. An overlooked doctoral thesis by Christophe McGlade, Uncertainties in the outlook for oil and gas , in contrast, focuses on how both supply and demand might be constrained in the coming decades. Peak oil researchers should take note of McGlade’s thesis because he predicted, in November 2013, that oil prices would sink, and that they will stay low throughout the second half of this decade. I found this paper on Google Scholar and have no connection with the author, but I appreciate his careful consideration of peak oil arguments, and his ability to distance himself from the more narrow-minded aspects of both economic and geological thinking. Here’s a representative quote from the middle of the thesis, p. 216: The focus of much of the discussion of peak […]