[niky]

While I agree it's rather silly to be counting down the days to the end of silver, since it's merely the end of cheap mined silver... after which we'll have to pay more for recycled silver, which is great for me, as I have a bunch of silver dollars and ingots.

We've already hit the peak of conventional oil. For the past three years since the collapse, the price and supply of oil have reacted to market conditions in a relaitvely inelastic way. The market can't afford more expensive oil and the producers can't produce oil from new sources at lower prices. However hard the hedgies and speculators try to push oil prices, it's stuck within a stable range, for now.

Even oil sands are suffering from the recession. They can't set up new refineries at less than $80 per barrel. The only reason we're even considering it now is because the huge price advantage of conventional oil has been completely wiped out.

Make no mistake. We will never run out of oil. There will always be some new reserve found or some process developed to extract it from something else. The question is... will we actually be able to afford it?

Brings to mind the term "peak demand"... Which is arguably where we are hovering around (in terms of oil) right now.