Well, high prices are probably a sign of peak oil. At the current price, I'm pretty sure that producing countries produce as much as they can. High prices mean :
- new cars have smaller motors or are EV, and they will stay on the road for 10 years
- people will prefer an heat pump to an oil heating, and it stays for 20 years
- some business go bankrupt because of the high oil prices, and they don't come back
- companies get used to video conferences instead of air flight (can you imagine that Nestle already had factories in the US and in Australia before WWII ? I wonder how they could manage that without internet, without fax, without air travel...)
- people insulate their houses, and insulation will stay for 20 years
and so on.
There was a comment that the 1974 oil crisis delayed the peak oil because it was a start for energy efficiency and countries diversified their energy sources.
Tar sand and shale oil is another delay stuff, but it require so much energy, water... that it can't grow as fast as conventional oil will sometimes go down. Maybe you heard of the Seneca Cliff, it's the idea that it takes much more time to build something than to look it go down. Typical example are Kodak, Panam... Peak oil could work the same way. The sad thing with tar sand and shale oil is that there is enough oil to support climate change, but coal also does the job.
Many people believe in peak demand, not me because of Jevons paradox. Oil is such a dense energy source that it will be used until the last drop. The only way to fight Jevons paradox is to have prices growing faster than efficiency.
There was a comment that production and consumption grow very close to one another. This is very normal because storage is complicated. Overproduction reduces prices which increases consumption, underproduction increases prices which reduces consumption. If you make a graph to compare prices and production, you really see that extra production comes to late to enjoy high prices.
