Have We Hit Peak Oil?

David Biello at Scientific American:

Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada, fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau—roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day—since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency—an energy cartel for oil consuming nations.
To support our modern lifestyles—from cars to plastics—the world has used more than one trillion barrels of oil to date. Another trillion lie underground, waiting to be tapped. But given the locations of the remaining oil, getting the next trillion is likely to cost a lot more than the previous trillion. The "supply of cheap oil has plateaued," argues chemist David King, director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and former chief scientific adviser to the U.K. government. "The global economy is severely knocked by oil prices of $100 per barrel or more, creating economic downturn and preventing economic recovery."

 We've at least hit peak production of easily reached oil.  The overall petroleum liquids production continues to rise, but a lot of that is natrual gas liquids production.  I think as the mega field production declines, we'll start to see the overall production decrease somewhat.  The big story is going to be Saudi Arabia.  Do they have the available capacity they claim, or are they bluffing?  I get the gut feeling they are bluffing.  I believe they have invested a ton in fancier secondary recovery technology to boost production to 10 million barrels a day to try to cast doubt on skeptics.  I bet they can't sustain such numbers.