I don't think we need to posit "peak oil" (which I see as a weak theory) to understand what is going on. The fact is that oil is a crucial resource, period.
Oil is important for any individual company or country to control, since it allows the receipt of scarcity rents -- i.e., something for nothing -- if the oil is cheap enough to extract and the price of oil is high enough. The "rent" refers to the difference between the price and the cost of extraction (or conversion into usable oil). Oil is strategically important. A country such as the US wants to avoid undue fluctuations of its price, to avoid (1) having the price rise too high, disrupting industrial economies, especially those addicted to oil such as the US; and (2) having the price fall too low, hurting the profits of oil-owning friends and cronies. It's also important for military purposes. The US military is especially oil-intensive. -- Jim Devine / "War is the health of the state" -- Randolph Bourne
