sing to me oh columbia thine image in oily mirror read

to mon frere le cynic and le oily smirch he doth try to smack ye vice presidential arse with i say beware mon frere les assassins are afoot and the hashish it is good but only in moderation. ...

sing me that patriotic disco again me buckos. the swaggering Dick hath spoken but and the $$$$$ doth fill his coffers. no need to sail the marbly main to find that dead man's chest: look into his bank book and see the swirling zeroes as they flitter in the eyes of the masses going to hades on the wings of apache copters and f17s.

thy wars oh overlord of the netherly deep where the crude doth flow hath given up her dead and they cry like the wailing orcus that our own ahabs sent to their grave.

and so the ship of state doth reek of an oily pall and the wraiths do twitter on her stern. i'll see the darth vader in his chains i guess when the revelation bells ring and darling jack snipe pricketh the dick to vats of oil where he'll boil for all eterne.

Vice President Dick Cheney's presentation to the London Institute of Petroleum in the fall of 1999 sums up the exponential drivers of peak oil nicely:

By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves [from fields already producing oil]. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.

Essentially, the dynamic Dick describes means that we need to replace 70% of existing daily production with new sources of liquid fuels every decade. The problem is that with each passing year the problem gets worse as both demand continues to increase (particularly as we bring China online) and depletion is calculated against a larger basis. Further, as the peak oil analysts argue, the depletion rate of existing fields may soon increase by up to eight percent as the mammoth fields (none of which have been found in 40 years) that provide bulk of the world's base production begin steep declines en masse (like we saw with with Mexico's Cantarell and Kuwait's Burgan last year). Ultimately, as is the case with all closed systems that exhibit exponential demand for finite resources, the need for replacement will eventually overwhelm the ability to produce it. The only debate is over when it will occur. Those estimates range from now (it has already occurred) to 2020, with the bulk of evidence pointing to an early emergence.