The hurricane demonstrated that there is little or no margin in today's energy markets, according to some analysts.
Any disruption of the market immediately causes disruption and steep price rises.
"Crude oil availability is one thing," said Aleklett. "Another is quality."
The benchmark oil produced in the North Sea is headed for depletion much faster than reserves high in sulphur that are more difficult to refine and tougher on the environment, he said.
A study this week by Barclays Capital investment bank indicated that production decline in the British North Sea has been sharper than anywhere else in the world.
Britain is pumping 1 million barrels a day less than it did in 1999, and Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have stepped up production to make up the difference.
"This is why [British] Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has stirred some astonishment among OPEC producers in accusing them of being responsible for the increase in the price of crude and demanding that they increase their production," the study said.
Aleklett said that it would be folly to think that there are still large deposits of oil waiting to be discovered.
Improvements in technology and discoveries were no more than a stopgap, at most delaying the impact of the Hubbert Peak.
Aleklett pointed to the relatively recent discovery of oil that had been made in Kazakhstan.
"With 10 billion barrels of reserves, it will supply world oil needs for four months at current rates of consumption," Aleklett said.
Big fuel guzzlers
Americans may be reeling from the realization that it now costs more than US$100 to tank up their lumbering SUVs, but the conservation message has yet to strike home.
Europe has been living with much higher gas prices for a long time, and this has not curbed the passion for ever more powerful and big four-wheel drive vehicles.
German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin this week slammed his country's auto industry for turning out "big fuel guzzlers."
One in every seven cars sold in London is a so-called Chelsea Tractor.
And in Paris, a mysterious gang called the degonfleurs -- the deflators -- has been going around the posher districts letting the air out of the tires of big SUVs in an attempt to discourage the popularity of the hulking gas guzzlers.
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