If one had to go only by the energy commentary last year, then it would be easy to dismiss peak oil as a settled debate – one where peak oil sceptics won the day.

Much ink was spent on eulogies on the demise of peak oil with Time.com announcing the death of peak oil.

Perhaps none was more definitive than the closure of a website called The Oil Drum, which was a meeting place for a broad church of peak oil believers and experts.

The site’s backers cited “scarcity of new content caused by a dwindling number of contributors” as the chief reason for making the website a static archive.

Starting in 2005 and closing last year, the rise and fall of The Oil Drum followed the trajectory of fear that the world was running out of oil.

But for the critics, the closure is an evidence of peak oil balderdash – that it is a fundamentally flawed theory.

“Peak oil theory has basically gone the way of the California condor, from widespread existence and acceptance … to near extinction,”Forbes magazine wrote.

“Today, given the new abundance of shale oil, almost no real industry leaders are peak oil proponents.”

The magazine noted it was a “theory based on a lack of imagination”

In essence, The Oil Drum became a victim of fraccing.

However, what industry watchers do agree on is that peak oil has to a great extent entered the collective conscious of the mainstream.

While peak oil scepticism is rife in popular news media, research in scientific and peer reviewed journals is still circumspect about the potential of the unconventional fossil fuel revolution.

Given that, recent industry and scientific research questions the credibility of a never-ending American shale spigot.

In its latest World Energy Outlook the International Energy Agency adopts a sharply contrasting position than its drumbeat a year ago of technological innovations such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling unleashing an energy revolution.

The outlook is far more circumspect, noting that while technological advances and high prices may push peak oil further out in the future, it is not certain.

Specifically, the IEA’s scenario where there is a push to keep the greenhouse gas emissions below the 450 parts per million – the level at which it would be possible to keep the global temperatures from rising above 2C – would lead to reduction in oil demand.

Under that scenario, the IEA forecasts a peak in global oil output happening at around 2020 at about 91 million barrels per day, with demand declining to 78MMbbl by 2035.

Without a clear pathway for addressing climate change, determining effects on oil demand would be speculative.

But equally, for many peak oil believers – to borrow from Mark Twain – “the reports of [peak oil] death are greatly exaggerated”