Oil is a finite, non-renewable resource, one that has powered enormous economic and population growth over the last century and a half. The world has become addicted to oil. In just 8 years, it’s projected the world will be consuming nearly 50,000 gallons of oil every second. It has been said that for every nine barrels of oil we consume, we are recovering only one. We’re using up oil at breakneck speed. It has been challenging to keep up with the rate of demand.

Peak oil is the label for this problem of energy resource depletion or the peak in global oil production. Exploration and discovery is becoming more expensive as we go further out into unknown and untouched areas. Oil reserves to tap in the state of emergency have been opened up for use. OPEC member governments supplied only approximate amounts. The International Energy Agency (IEA) even admitted to knowing about some of OPEC’s members not revealing accurate amounts of oil stored in reserve. The global impact on oil prices is staggering. The world economy and the strength of the dollar are directly related to oil supplies and cost.

How can the output be increased to meet the demand? OPEC claims they will (to 20million barrels per day), but it’s been found that OPEC Middle East oil nations, even Saudi Arabia, are pumping oil from fields known to be post-production. OPEC is relying on what is called “Peak Oil” when they claim this increased production of 20 million barrels of crude oil per day. While most of the world idly stand by, investors are beginning to catch on to what’s happening in the oil and gas industry on the global scale. While the energy crisis is beginning to make its way into the news media limelight, just a few are aware of the true scope and magnitude of this crisis. Other alternatives are being studied while exploration is still being done accompanied with economical ways to recover the new discoveries.

The rate of oil production (extraction and refining) currently is about 84 million barrels per day. Once we have used up about half of the original reserves, oil production stops growing and begins a terminal decline, hence ‘peak’. The peak in oil production does not signify running out of oil, but it does mean the end of cheap oil. For economies leveraged on an ever increasing quantity of cheap oil, the consequences seem inevitable.

Oil companies like Triple Diamond Energy Corporation have, of course, extracted the easier-to-reach, cheaper oil first. The oil pumped first, near the surface, is light and ’sweet’ with a low sulfur content and therefore easy to refine. Naturally these fields are worked on before the rest until final depletion determined when it takes the energy of a barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil.