Oil limits

Last month, I posted on an interesting WSJ article that discussed a plateau in oil production. In it, I said:

The idea of oil production reaching a "constant" level of output that it can't push through sounds suspiciously like a natural limit to me. The article references 100 million bpd as that limit several times. I'm not implying there's a natural law from which we can't deviate, but given the plethora of challenges currently found in oil discovery, drilling and funding, I wonder what happens north of 100 million bpd. Does each marginal barrel have an increasing incremental cost of extraction? Does it cost $150 per barrel to go from 100 million to 105 million bpd say?

Returning to this topic, I came across a great post a few days ago (yes, I know, but the holidays area time consuming endeavor) with a more in-depth look at the fact that "forecasters are converging on 100 million b/d" (h/t The Cost of Energy):

While the latest mainstream energy forecasts don't predict a peak or plateau, they do see little more than 100 million b/d of conventional oil output by 2030 -- the end of the forecast period. Both Exxon Mobil's new long-term outlook and the latest World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency (IEA) project conventional oil production of 105 million-106 million b/d against total liquids supply of 116 million b/d.

Both links are worth a read.