June 12, 2006 3:41PM # BP Dismisses “Peak Oil” Concerns By [Jerry Taylor](https://www.cato.org/people/jerry-taylor) --- SHARE The interesting thing to me about the [“are we running out of oil” debate](https://www.cato.org/2006/05/16/oil-unbound/) is that those who know the most about the oil business and with the most at stake in the answer — the major investor-owned oil companies — by and large aren’t worried. The further away you get from the oil producers themselves, the more you encounter worriers. In that vein, it’s worth reading [this summary](http://www.platts.com/Oil/News/8483334.xml?p=Oil/News&sub=Oil&src=energybulletin) of BP CEO’s John Browne’s interview with *Der Spiegel* that appeared yesterday. The only investor-owned oil company that I am aware of that has any substantial disagreement with Browne’s analysis is [Chevron](http://www.willyoujoinus.com/). But then again, Chevron is relatively terrible at finding oil compared to their competitors, so perhaps their worries about depletion are handy rationales for poor past performance. By the way, I wrote an [essay](http://www.willyoujoinus.com/discussion/experts/b/?d=17) on oil depletion for Chevron’s “Will You Join Us?” webpage when it was initially launched, but, alas, it hasn’t seemed to change Chevron’s mind much. ##### Related Tags [Energy and Environment](https://www.cato.org/research/energy-environment), [General](https://www.cato.org/general) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).