Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com

Last December EnergyTechStocks.com forecast that 2008 would be a battle between peak oil believers vs. deniers. (See Investors Should Expect to be Buffeted by Oil Price Uncertainty). When Goldman Sachs issued its $200 oil prediction last month, arguing that demand growth would continue to outpace available supply, the believers took control of the market, and haven’t looked back since.

But as big a deal as Goldman’s prediction has been, it will pale in comparison with the moment when President Bush utters the words “peak oil.” In January President Bush alluded to peak oil when he told America’s ABC TV network that it’s difficult to ask someone to do something they may not be able to do, a reference to questions surrounding whether Saudi Arabia really is able to further raise its oil output. (See Bush’s Allusion to it heightens chance of ‘Peak Oil Shock’ on Wall Street.)

Last week President Bush moved closer to proclaiming that the world’s oil production is peaking and that, unless demand is cut, even higher oil prices are to come. The U.S. president told a conference of Middle East leaders, “The rising price of oil has brought great wealth to some in this region, but the supply of oil is limited, and nations like mine are aggressively developing alternatives to oil.”

If Bush had told an American audience that the U.S. is, essentially, starting to run out of oil, this would be old news. But to tell leaders of the last big oil-producing region on earth that their oil supplies are “limited” is to forecast a seismic shift in the global economy, one away from oil and toward, as the president said, “alternatives” to oil.

Investors need to be ready for when Bush finally goes all the way and utters the words “peak oil.” The race to develop alternatives will instantly speed up, public companies across the alternative energy spectrum will see their stock prices rise, and private companies will prepare their initial public offerings.

First to benefit should be the direct alternatives: biofuel developers, along with developers of electric vehicles, and the advanced batteries that will go in them.