Peak oil, fact or fiction?

George Monbiot recently penned an article titled, We Were Wrong on Peak Oil.

Peak oil pundits around the world convulse in their seats as they read these words.

By my definition, Monbiot is right. Average daily production reached the highest levels ever and continues to grow. Meaning we haven't reached peak oil.

What people fail to understand is that shale oil, the main contributor to new US domestic production, is costly to produce, both in terms of energy invested over energy returned, and also in terms of money.

They also don't understand that the vast majority of oil produced by a man-made fractured shale well comes in the first year, with precipitious drops in production thereafter.

Meaning that continued production requires a continued frenzy of drilling, fracking, hauling, etc.

The day this frenzied activity stops, you can set your timer. One year thereafter, this new supply will have, for all practical purposes, disappeared.

The rise in production continues, unabated.

The cliff at the end of this rise in production steepens.