Grist reports that three out of five petroleum geologists predict global oil production to peak in 10 years or less:

For those out there who aren’t familiar with the concept, an oil supply “peak” is the point at which global petroleum production gradually declines, never to return to its previous highs. U.S. oil production peaked in 1972, ushering in decades of growing reliance on foreign sources of petroleum — along with all the international and economic entanglements that’s entailed. Many predict that a worldwide peak in oil production will cause even more turmoil than the U.S. peak has.

Perhaps surprisingly, then, more than one in 10 petroleum geologists surveyed believe that the peak has already occurred but has been masked by delays and ambiguities in the international production data. On the flip side, only 15 percent of respondents believe that global peak is more than two decades off.

This is really quite remarkable. Just a few years ago, the conventional wisdom — at least, the wisdom that we were hearing from major oil producers, top energy consultants, and international energy agencies — held that the peak was many decades in the future. Apparently, professional petroleum geologists now feel free to speak their minds — and are saying that a production peak isn’t far off at all.

One group of industry people who are even more pessimistic for oil production is the International Energy Agency, who have been preparing a global oil production report – a draft of which was leaked to the Financial Times in London, saying that oil production is declining 9.1 percent per year:

Output from the world’s oilfields is declining faster than previously thought, the first authoritative public study of the biggest fields shows.

Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent, the International Energy Agency says in its annual report, the World Energy Outlook, a draft of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.

9.1 percent’s a big figure in these things. Considering regular crude oil only, this means that 6.825 million barrels a day of new production capacity must come on line each year just to keep up with the aggregate natural decline rate in existing oilfields. That’s a new Saudi Arabia every 18 months.

As an aside, I don’t like the phrasing of “without extra investment to raise production” – I find that to be deceptive. It implies that if we buckle down and REALLY drill, production levels will return to “normal.” That doesn’t reveal the truth about an ongoing and inevitable depletion of a finite substance.

Aside from that, it’s further reason that we should be taking a very serious look at changing the way this country – and this city – builds. This summer’s high gas prices (and I believe we’ll see them again) were a warning that development that’s 100% reliant on the automobile won’t be sustainable when things really start coming undone with respect to peak oil. Politicians like to say that America’s sprawl-fest lifestyle is “not negotiable,” but reality will intrude rather rudely on that mantra.

It’s important to look at how we can alter our living situation to not leave us headed down a dead end – and do it in a way that’s happy and pleasant, not a punishment. Traditional urbanism activated with transit isn’t especially complex – we’ve just forgotten it since WWII. It doesn’t require heroic new technologies, and nobody has to be crammed into a skyscraper against their will. Rather than single-use pods, suburbs ought to grow as their own villages and small towns, with their own neighborhoods and commerce centers, in a walkable, bikeable, and transit-friendly manner – combined, naturally, with reinvestment in existing urban neighborhoods.

Understand – it’s not about “running out of oil.” It’s about the systems we’ve constructed in post-WWII America which are so dependent on the free flow of cheap oil being severely impacted by increasing fuel prices and availability – things like transportation, food production, freight shipping, and more.