10.06
There are theories that the “Peak Oil” concept is a fraud concocted by the oil industries to increase prices amid concerns about future supplies. The oil industry is aware of vast reserves of untapped oil, according to these theories, but it deliberately refuses to utilize them in order to maintain the illusion of scarcity.
Parallels have been drawn between this and the diamond industry, where it is recognized that a monopoly cabal maintains an illusion of scarcity of diamonds in order to increase their value. Such an idea was featured prominently in the novel Shock Wave by Clive Cussler.
The alleged presence of large quantities of oil has led to increased interest in the Western world in a theory of the origin of oil that was popular in the 1950s and 1960s in the Soviet Union and Ukraine—the Abiogenic petroleum origin theory.