Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
M. King Hubbert and the Peak Oil controversy
Getting an oil supply forecast right for one country with excellent data is dif-
ficult enought. But it's far easier than attempting to do it for the entire world oil
sector, in which much information is hidden, inadequate or non-existent. This
is what the disciples of M. King Hubbert have found.
Hubbert was an American oil geologist who successfully predicted the peak in
US oil production. In 1956 he examined oil-production statistics from the lower
48 US states, and plotted them into a bell-shaped curve. The chart projected
that their production would rise for at least a dozen more years, but then
reach a crest in the early 1970s. He was proven right: the peak arrived in 1970.
Hubbert has been somewhat of an icon to conservationists ever since. But
applying his predictive methods to world production has been difficult.
Oil fields typically share this bell-shaped production profile that Hubbert plot-
ted. In contrast to the steady state of, say, coal production, output initially rises
very sharply, as natural pressure pushes the oil out. But then it peaks and tails
off as the volume of remaining oil - and therefore the pressure of it - dimin-
ishes, despite any enhanced recovery techniques.
If we could predict the peak, then we would have a better idea of remaining
reserves - and vice versa. Knowing the timing of the peak in world oil produc-
tion and/or the level of remaining reserves would be very useful. But apart
from the general opacity of world oil data, there is the distorting factor of OPEC
countries in the Middle East. Their production does not necessarily mirror the
reserve profile of their oil fields: it is often deliberately reined in to sustain price.
In 2001, Kenneth Deffeyes, a Shell col-
league of Hubbert's and later a Princeton
University professor, used Hubbert's ana-
lytic methods to predict that world pro-
duction would peak sometime between
2004 and 2008. It didn't. And Deffeyes and
other “peakists” have been ridiculed by
many in the oil industry.
The ridiculers argue that oil output can be
almost indefinitely extended by exploiting
unconventional oil deposits (disregarding
the environment impact), by assuming
that new technology will be developed
(as it always has done in the past), and
to some extent by profiting from global
warming to open up the Arctic to explo-
ration. In short, they accuse the peak-
oil believers of crying wolf. Perhaps they
should at least bear in mind that, in the
story, the wolf eventually shows up.
A cheery-looking M. King
Hubbert, the patron saint of
peak oil.
