In reply to Yoshie's questions: Obviously, crude oil is a finite resource, in Mexico and the planet. Current oil extraction and consumption rates, if extrapolated, must exhaust the resource at some point in the future. But this kind of extrapolation is pointless, economically and politically.
Models predicting the end of oil are flawed, even if the geology underpinning them is sound. Historical rates of extraction and consumption don't reflect technical geological possibilities alone. They respond mainly to economic conditions. Economic conditions result from people's behavior and, in turn, shape such behavior. As a result, predicting future oil consumption rates is -- fundamentally -- self-referential. In the jargon of economists, the mechanism that generates the time-series data on extraction or consumption rates is not stationary. With non-stationary systems, models can be consistent with historical data but useless as predictive devices. That's why I'm not impressed with peak-oil models, even if they have been adequately back-tested or calibrated to historical data. The future is not a replica of the past. But even if we assumed stationarity in the economic conditions, there is grounds for skepticism. Markets are not necessarily wise; they are just people buying and selling stuff. Markets can only be as smart as the people in them. And we know from history how foolish people with money at stake can be. But markets have also proved to be adaptive. And we know prices are based on expectations. (Marx's theory of value is based on expectations about the social labor-time requirements for the production of a given commodity.) So, one has to wonder: Why hasn't those theories persuaded big money (which can buy the best available geological and economic expertise) to hike the price to levels consistent with the peak-oil story? In the Dubai or NY mercantile exchanges, one can take positions on oil for delivery in the spring of 2013. Aside from having a margin account, futures are free. The premia of options with strikes near current prices are cheap. What's keeping peak-oil theorists from smarting up the market? Or have they already, in which case the price already reflect the probability that peak oil stories may be right? Of course, one can flip the argument. It may well be that big money is acting stupid, something we'll only be able to see after the fact. That is not implausible. Also, people have only recently become more active in dealing with the effects (and hopefully the causes) of global warming. So, only recently it has become likely that the large external costs of oil consumption will start to get internalized ex ante. And perhaps markets haven't incorporated this information into the prices yet. But I really have no idea. That's why I merely register my skepticism. In the case of PEMEX, short of learning more about the geology of the Gulf of Mexico, I'm convinced that the reasons why PEMEX extraction rates are facing immediate limits are corruption, incompetence, cronyism, and starve-the-beast policies. People who know the inside have been saying that, in PEMEX, prospection and maintenace (two basic forms of investment in any extractive industry) have been neglected for decades. Corruption, "outsourcing," "duct leakages," and like practices are rampant. When predators of this kind can't just appropriate public wealth, they allow it to go to waste. It is in their interest to weaken PEMEX. The industrial layer sitting on top of mere extraction, which adds value to crude oil and gas, is decaying. But the real prize for them is the resource underneath. The industrial layer can be rebuilt with capital. And the availability of capital depends on the price of oil.
