It has been a long wait for “peak oilers,” whose passionate belief is that the world will run out of oil in coming years, sending prices through the roof.
This splinter religion came into being in 1956 when M. King Hubbert produced some simple supply/demand charts showing that US reserves of Texas tea would dry up by 1965-70, forcing a heavy reliance on imports with which we have become all too familiar. This was later expanded globally, implying that Western civilization would come to a grinding halt.
It all seemed very prescient, when in 1973 OPEC raised prices from $3/barrel to $12 in the wake of the Yom Kippur war, and the resulting boycott caused enormous lines at American gas stations. It happened again in 1979 with the fall of the Shah of Iran, taking crude from $12 to $40. Then Saudi overproduction kicked in big time, bring 20 years of falling prices, all the way down to $8. At the 1998 low, oil was selling for less than the barrel that contained it. Full article at: Peak Oil
Peak oil is not a religion; it's simply a comment regarding resource extraction rates and is applicable to many resources besides oil.
As with any finite resource, by definition, a maximum rate of production must be reached at some point.
Everyone in the energy sector knows that peak oil has to happen sooner or later, but the term is not used that often because it has come to be associated with kooky individuals who predict overly negative/catastrophic outcomes. This is rather unfortunate.
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