Last week’s post about Tony Hayward’s comments on ‘peak demand’ attracted some good comments. Here’s our response as a post – since it got rather long:

Firstly, audio of the Hayward interview is now online here. There are some other interesting comments that weren’t picked up in the print reports, including the world’s ability – and particularly China and India’s – to handle high oil prices.

A few commenters raised the contrast or similarity between ‘peak demand’ and ‘peak supply’. Without wanting to stir the pot too much, the demand/supply dichotomy can be seen as just  a matter of semantics – or a matter of disciplines. If you look at the likes of Jeff Rubin, a peak oil economist who writes about the effect that more expensive oil will have on the world, then peak demand is a lot like peak supply, only from the economist’s point of view. (For more on that, see James Hamilton’s great ‘how to talk to an economist about peak oil‘ post.)