Is the British government doing enough to prepare for a future of diminishing oil production both internationally and in the North Sea? It seems a timely question as oil reached another record price of $92 yesterday, creeping closer to $100 a barrel.
This week, German-based researchers claimed that global oil production peaked last year and that it could fall by half as soon as 2030.
The British government says there is no reason to panic and that global oil supply is sufficient for the foreseeable future. But critics point to the fact that renewables in the UK generate only about 4% of the country's electricity and 2% of its overall energy needs.
The Guardian's Andy Beckett recently travelled to an oil rig in the North Sea and in a big piece today writes that "Britain is in the autumn of its North Sea era".
Last year British oil output, which peaked in 1985, was at its lowest since 1979. The oil is harder and harder to get out, though one positive note is struck in Beckett's piece by the growth of smaller British firms with specialist, transferable skills at getting oil from challenging places.
Then there are the possibilities of the UK's controversial claims to the Antarctic and its possible oil reserves.
Beckett also wonders about Norway's system of building a national fund from oil revenues and asks whether the UK has husbanded its oil money well, especially during the Thatcher years.
Some dismiss the "peak oil" theorists as doom mongers and conspiracy theorists, while those anxious about oil running out fear governments are burying their heads in the sand and making poor progress on developing alternative energy strategies.
A future collapse of living standards to pre-industrial revolution levels and wars for vanishing resources form some of the warnings of those worried at how we will live after peak - on the other side of the mountain.
Personally, I have been slightly terrified of the fallout from peak oil - and its possible calamitous effects in several decades' time, just as climate change could be wreaking devastation - ever since watching the documentary A Crude Awakening last year.
It is chilling when you realise that some very clever people who are thinking about alternatives to oil are quite pessimistic about any of the contending technologies. And that governments just don't seem worried enough about this.
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