At last I can say the wait is over.

Admittedly, I was mere seconds from copping out like Time magazine when they named "You" as person of the year. But to be fair, there were so many submissions that I found myself looking through them for hours at a time. Sometimes I had to quickly pretend I was working for a minute or so when my boss came within view of my computer screen.

After narrowing down my favorites, the list was still over 50 submissions long. But after long, painstaking hours, it all came down to just two. I couldn't pick one over the other because they were so similar. So I copped out a little and combined the two.

Drum roll, please . . .

The #1 Thing You'll See When We Run Out of Oil:

In 2030, thousands of Florida residents flee in solar-powered walkers as the state passes the "Sunshine Tax."

Believe me, all that work was worth it.

Tightening Oil Markets

If you've been keeping up with my column for the last few weeks, you know the reality of peak oil has become a serious issue. Sure, there are skeptics out there.

"Haven't you noticed oil's been falling the last couple of days, Keith? It's already at $90 a barrel. What do you say to that?" was the first question I got today.

I didn't even have the heart to respond, and hoped he realized that oil is still around $90 a barrel. Prices spiked to $98.60 a barrel only days ago! I don't have the patience to argue about it.

Last Thursday, I told you I wanted to focus on one thing today: the future.

There's a reason for the phrase, "Oil is king." But oil is more than a king, my friends, it's a tyrant.

The fact is that our oil consumption is growing at a staggering rate while our production growth remains flat. If it turns out that 85 million barrels per day is the peak in world production, things are going to get pretty interesting from here on out.

Personally, I don't see our oil addiction going away in the next two decades. Having said that, the next logical question is . . .

What happens next?

Investing in the Oil Crisis

I think we're going to see a surge in unconventional oil plays. We can safely assume that whenever oil prices push higher, there will be an overwhelming amount of money pouring into these unconventional oil producers.

OK, so most of my readers know where I'm headed, right?

Within the next ten years, production from Canadian oil sands is going to increase fivefold. That comes out to five million barrels a day before 2020. The U.S. government is practically begging our neighbors to the north to ramp up production as quickly as possible.

Trust me, I'm not guessing about the interest in Canadian oil sands . . .

I've seen it with my own eyes.

But I want to go a step further. I'm not excited about the massive mining operations in Alberta. Surface mining reaches only about 20% of total oil sands. What gets me excited about the bituminous Albertan sands is the in situ recovery methods. That is the future of Canadian oil sands.

I can here the skeptics already. "Oil sands are too much work. They use too much water. Too much natural gas. In other words, it costs too much!"

And here's the kicker . . .

I can't disagree with them.

What they're missing, however, is the human factor. To be honest, I can think of several companies off the top of my head that are making some serious headway on the production obstacles. But I'm not writing this to plug some company. And anybody who blindly invests their hard earned money without a second thought deserves the inevitable loss they'll suffer. So please, always do your own due diligence.

I understand you're probably not reading my column each week for your health. And it wouldn't be fair to leave the newer readers out of the loop. If you're interested in checking this out for yourself, please feel free to go here.

For those of you about to send a barrage of messages saying "What about alternative energy! What about solar, wind and the rest of the family?" I'll go over my skepticism on Thursday.

Here's a small hint: It all comes down to scale.

Until next time,

Keith Kohl

"Energy stocks... The only way a human is going to make any money."

-- Matt Simmons, Peak Oil's first and most vocal proponent,
and founder of the country's last pure play energy investment banking firm.

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Four Words.....Green River Basin Utah

I read somewhere GM has a electric car that can run 14 miles before needing a charge; it currently is mothballed supposedly because of a battery issue. When you work in a factory and are around electric powered forklifts and see what they do it really raises a big question mark(how far the is the reach of big oil and the fact that the government has to collect that tax at the pump). I really feel we have the tech know-how to make a car that can create its own energy to power itself. Put a 12" grain bin fan in the front of a car and at 60 mph the power that it would create tied to a electrical generator would probably keep a set of batteries overcharged and then there is the rotation of the axles of the wheels to create power. Yes I know there is the setting in traffic; but I come back to that electical forklift running all day on a charge. Did you know there is a compressed air driven motor powered by an air compressor. Use a 12 volt compressor tied to batteries charged by the motion of the car(wouldn't be to hard for a GM idiot engineer to figure that one out). Don't bother mentioning Ford they are dumber yet. There has to be someone out there in the world(not from the US) say a China person or a India person or a South American person that says enough is enough and makes and markets such a car. Why has big oil got the whole world thinking they have the only solution(money). We have the waves the sun, the heat of the earth, the wind and the waste we produce(human and animal waste included) to produce energy and all we can think of is spending our energy and money on two stupid wars and big oil (and the lives of some people that probably could help us out on the home front). One person said if we took half of the stupid airplanes out of the sky there would not be a oil problem(is the lost of our basic way of life worth us flying everywhere; if we keep it up we are not going to flying anywhere). What about all the fuel the ships from China burn bringing us our goods; maybe our leaders and industry should think about bringing the jobs back home and we pay our people to work instead of putting it in high price oil. A side note; how far would the cost of the two wars we are now in go to financing a government supported health insurance policy and correct our Social Security deficit? I got to get busy so I better quit (the only way I figure I can survive in the US is to become a mini S&P 500 daytrader (its about the only thing the American people have to look forward to; do you think there is enough dumb money overseas for us to win some of it back?)

Let me tell you about my long young life. I can vividly remember my Granddady Andrew Jackson Crump (1888-1965) Plowing with a mule. He had no central air. No indoor plumbing. An outhouse. When I would visit I would have to take a shower by running a garden hose off the top of the smoke house. Do I want to live like this? No thank you! But that type of life might be better than falling down and not trying. I remember 1973-1974 and pushing my 1969 Mustang to the gas pump. I remember the first time I arrived in KSA and they were producing 8 to 9 million barrels per day and when I left 18 years later, we were producing 8 or 9 million barrels per day. Tar Sand? Yes Please! Solar? Yes Please! Bio? Yes Please! CTL? Yes Please! GTL? Yes Please! Nuclear? Yes Please! When a ship is sinking, people will grab for anything. They don't have time to think if it will float or not. But all of this talk about alternatives is like asking 2 fat ladies to run a marathon. One you feed Prim Rib and eggs. The other you give the alternative, lettuce! Which one do you think will win the race? But all of this might be moot. The U.S. Population will increase by 100 million people by 2043 and this could outstrip our lettuce option. The most important question never asked; the oil that we do have remaining, how are we going to use it? Burn it in motorcars where 84 million tourist per year can go to Florida and see Mickey Mouse at Disneyland? I am not planning to go out and start shopping for a mule anything soon, so please dig up the tar sand! Now! Regards, Aramco Renick

Keith - the next oil boom will come from Australia's Gippsland Basin where they have some 400b tonnes on clean low cost easily winnable brown coal ($3-5/t). Govt paper shows that energy value for just 1/3rd of the area currently under mining for power generation is 4 times the value of the North West Shelf off Western Australia. a US based company has the right to all this.

The fortune in Australia's Gippsland Basin??
Why would Australia want to dig up the State of Victoria when there is lots and lots of much better Quality coal in the areas being mined presently? And they ,Our Labour States can not even supply the infrastructure for the coal that is mined today? A few month ago there were according to newspaper reports 79 ships laying offshore loading facilities in Queensland trying to get loaded !!

To Keith Kohl, Hello Keith ,I'm Steve , I work ,and have worked at all the various Projects in the oil sands. I'm a journeyman scaffolder/carpenter. I find it amazing that Canada is on the move , funny thing is that our neibour to the east has more bitumen than we do , and no investment is being poured their yet, I've enjoyed your articles ,would love to invest, please let me know how to get involved .