In 2014 I wrote on the arrival of peak oil. That now appears at best premature. So what did I get wrong, and what (if anything) did I get right? In my initial post I made two key assumptions. The first was that fracking would not be that important, because it remained a high-cost method of extraction. The second was that Saudi Arabia still had market power, and that therefore would respond to rising costs by cutting output. The third that changes in demand would be modest. Finally, though not (then and now) relevant, I assumed that alternative energy sources would remain marginal and substitution away from petroleum small. Let me begin with the last, irrelevant point: alternative energy. In fact there’s a lot of progress, progress that may be outstripping improvements in the (mature) thermal energy sector. Both wind and solar technologies see steady improvement, while thermal technology […]