"We're all set with our explanation of how oil production hasn't peaked.. Bring it on!"

[...]Dr Campbell, is a former chief geologist and vice-president at a string of oil majors including BP, Shell, Fina, Exxon and ChevronTexaco. He explains that the peak of regular oil - the cheap and easy to extract stuff - has already come and gone in 2005. Even when you factor in the more difficult to extract heavy oil, deep sea reserves, polar regions and liquid taken from gas, the peak will come as soon as 2011, he says.

This scenario is flatly denied by BP, whose chief economist Peter Davies has dismissed the arguments of "peak oil" theorists.

"We don't believe there is an absolute resource constraint. When peak oil comes, it is just as likely to come from consumption peaking, perhaps because of climate change policies as from production peaking."[...]

..... and they will argue until the death of their stock price and a literal decimation of the world 's GDP (and most likely the world's population), a la tobacco companies, that their product is more expensive and less available due to consumer choice (and, as a masterstroke, that "they always predicted it so").

(link goes to news story; this one to wikipedia's article on Peak Oil)