Have We Reached Peak Oil?

Recommend (2) Comments (0)

Oil exploration is an expensive and time-consuming process. The largest oil fields get found first, meaning the first oil that’s produced is the easiest. Once production ramps up, however, the remaining oil is harder to find, harder to pump, and harder to refine.

This is not like emptying a gas tank, where you can keep driving as though nothing is wrong until the last drop is sucked out. It’s more like sucking juice out of oranges through a straw. Some are juicier than others, but you’ll never get all the juice. After a while you have to suck harder on every orange, and yet you’ll get less out and only become thirstier.

There used to be about 3 trillion barrels of ("conventional" or "light") crude oil on Earth, including estimates of oil fields not even discovered yet. Based on the performance of many known oil fields, only about 2 trillion of those barrels will ever be pumped out of the ground, and the maximum production rate (barrels per day) will be reached when about 1 trillion barrels have been pumped. We’re there today.
 
We also understand quite well how individual oil fields peter out, as we’ve already seen numerous examples of oil fields collapsing in over 50 countries, including the U.S., Russia, Europe (the North Sea), and most recently Mexico (the Cantarell field).

There are many estimates of when the peak rate of world-wide oil production will occur. Petroleum geologists, engineers and scientists estimate 2000 – 2015, while economists estimate 2015 – 2030 on the assumption that the rising price of oil will make more energy appear almost immediately – the technology will arrive before it is needed, and more/all of the in-ground oil will be produced..My estimate, using statistical techniques over the entire 20th century of technology, with economic booms and busts and world wars, gives 95% confidence that the peak of world-wide oil production will occur in 2004 – 2014.

No matter who’s right, there will be shortages in our life-time, but unlike the oil crises of the 1970’s this time the shortages will not end. We will have to tell our children, “You’ll never get to live like we did, we took your share.”

As noted peak oil expert Dr. Hubbert said, “When the energy cost of recovering a barrel of oil becomes greater than the energy content of the oil, production will cease no matter what the monetary price may be.”