End of Oil-Age???...

...Finally!!
(I added "Finally", because last year in this blog I had made a posting with similar title:End of Oil...

...Since then, the fact that we have "moved beyond the Oil Peak" is - finally - but gradually becoming a part of conventional wisdom).

In the last one month, two interesting events took place (not really mentioned - or debated - in the mainstream media):

Goldman Sachs - the biggest trader of energy derivatives(the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index is considered a barometer of energy and commodities prices), came out with a report that the oil prices would peak to $105.
http://tinyurl.com/4fof5

On the 14th March US Republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett made a 60minutes presentation on "Oil Demands: The Challenges of Peak Oil" to the US Congress. The presentation was based on factual evidence that the world had reached/is about to reach its peak oil production, after which the oil-based energy age would go into a decline.

[The text of the presentation is available at:
http://tinyurl.com/48eod
And a 45mb video of the same can be downloaded from: http://tinyurl.com/4c339 ]

What makes Congressman Bartlett's presentation important is that this is the first time ever anywhere in the world, a government representative (Bartlett was the Chairman of the Energy Subcommittee of Science) publicly acknowledged this possibility that the oil age is be ending
(though, in the scientific community, this has been a much discussed fact).
http://www.hubbertpeak.com

To be fair, there were others also, who have also been mentioning such an eventuality since some time. For example:

Deutsche Bank had published a 23page report titled "Energy Prospects after Petroleum Age" in December 2004.
http://tinyurl.com/4d3vc

A book to be published in the coming month by Kenneth Deffeyes (a geologist whoused to work with Shell oil Research Lab, and now a Professor Emeritus at univ of Princeton) is titled "Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage" One can read the first chapter at:
http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/s7121.html

there is, in fact, an entire website "http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html" devoted to this theme...
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html
Etc.

The Evidence:

Lest one takes these publications as yet another Dooms-Day Prophesy, I am reproducing the graphs from the previous post, which tell their own stories:


In 1998, the price of a barrel of oil was US$18 - today, it hovers around US$55!!!