“Go back someday and read carefully about why the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Read specifically about Roosevelt’s oil embargo of them in August 1941. Think they would have started a war with the US if they could have just pumped oil outside Tokyo?”
This is one of the worst arguments I’ve seen on one of these threads in a long time. That was an entirely artificial and temporary situation. What could it possibly, in a million billion years, have anything to do with peak oil?
Valid question.
The point is oil is not everywhere. You can’t drill just anywhere and get oil. There are places it does not exist. If you agree with that, then you agree it is finite, by definition.
The geology is such that millions of years of Japanese earthquakes have cracked any caprock they might ever have had. When caprock cracks, any oil under it fractionates over those millions of years and escapes. It’s also likely why NPR-A tested recently in western Alaska to have a tiny portion of the previous estimate. Too many millions of years in which an earthquake can occur and crack caprocks, and Alaska does have quakes.
Once you accept that there are places where there is no oil, then you have accepted that it is finite. When you have accepted that, then you have accepted there will be a point where frantic drilling can not increase production further.
And you accept that the next step after militarily securing supply is militarily reducing competing consumption. The east coast of China needs to be depopulated if American lifestyles are to improve, or even maintain.