I’ve been meaning to pass along a couple of interesting items regarding oil production and prices.
First, several of the bloggers over at the Oil Drum have launched an intriguing new project — a Wikipedia project in which they and a number of other contributors are accumulating data on all the major, new oil projects around the world and contributing the data to a single database that can be used to document historical trends and attempt to forecast future trends in oil production. The contributors are focusing on basic data for all of the major projects that would add new oil production capacity, including estimates of the peak flow when such information is available. My compliments to the creators of this excellent information resource.
Meanwhile, this John Cassidy column predicts that the price of oil has peaked for the time being and that prices will begin falling to the $50 a barrel range:

. . . the experts who are predicting the worst, based on geology and geopolitics, are missing the crucial role that economic incentives play in determining the price of crude. The tripling of oil prices since the summer of 2003 has unleashed forces that within the next two or three years will bring oil prices tumbling back down to below $50 a barrel. Looking even further ahead, prices could easily fall to $30 a barrel or even lower. So before you trade in your Cadillac Escalade for a Toyota Prius, think twice: $1.50-a-gallon gas might not be gone forever.

In fact, Clear Thinkers favorite James Hamilton also thinks that oil prices have peaked.