SO MUCH FOR “PEAK OIL:” At Long Last, Kashagan Comes Back Online.

It’s a moment 16 years and more than $50 billion in the making: Kazakhstan’s shallow-water Kashagan oil and gas project just exported its first commercial cargoes of oil. . . .

It’s been a long road to this point. Kashagan has been a nightmare for its investors, coming in more than $30 billion over budget and more than a decade behind schedule, but the important thing is that, at long last, the crude is starting to flow.

From a producers’ standpoint, though, the timing couldn’t be worse. The operators of the Kashagan field won’t be happy that their product is being sold for less than half of what it would’ve fetched three summers back (when the project should have been off the ground). Likewise, petrostate producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia will be loathe to see yet another source of supply coming online, just as they’re working putting the final touches on a deal that would see OPEC reduce its overall output and have Moscow potentially freeze its production levels.

While these oil-soaked regimes struggle with the effects the global oil glut is having on their state budgets, suppliers elsewhere are busy fighting for their own share of the crowded market. We’re living in a time of extraordinary hydrocarbon abundance—so much for “peak oil.”

I remember when lefties greeted any expressed doubts about “peak oil” with their trademark combination of shock and outrage, followed by assertions that you were a shill for Exxon or something.