Great discussion B. But I still think Hubbert was not that far off, and the the peak may already be behind us. Tar sands are not oil, and they require adding tons of hydrogen (a cleaning burning fuel) to turn them into something like oil. Sure extraction technologies will improve, but I think the quest for more oil in remote places is mostly a speculative finance game. As you suggest, the costs of new oil are becoming prohibitive, but I think they were prohibitive a while back. Oil remains the most heavily subsidized energy resource, especially if one counts the galactic level of externalities. Can you imagine what would have happened if we made consumer pay at the pump the costs of keeping an extra carrier group in the Persian Gulf, not be mention the various actual wars fought and lost. I was thinking about this recently when someone invoked the notion of a war on climate change. We argued for a Manhattan Project on alternative energy back in the 1970s, and recall Jimmy called for the "moral equivalent of war". I call my tales of working in Washington my "moral equivalent of war stories". What happened of course was the moral equivalent of the oil companies telling us that Hitler was a hoax.