Peak Oil 3: Has Production Peaked?

Forbes ^ | 6/27/2014 | Michael Lynch

[thackney]

[Qout]

Conventional oil production peaked in 2005. US oil consumption peaked in 2007. Oil consumption in Europe is on the decline. Even China’s oil imports are no longer rising and are at a 9-month low. Yet the world has not come to an end.

Peak oil is so 9 years ago. The world is moving on to the next generation of hydrocarbons.

[henkster]

Gee, I wonder where Sam Kunaknana and the “Center for Biological Diversity” come up with the millions of dollars to hire armies of well-paid lawyers to fight these projects. Sam must be very well-to-do, and there must be a whole lot of grandmas sending $10 checks to the “Center for Biological Diversity.”

(See tagline)

[JoeFromSidney]

Back in the 1950s M. King Hubbert start the peak oil meme by fitting a curve to historical oil production (I'm away from my references and can't recall whether it was a Normal or Logistic curve; they're similar but not identical). By projecting the fitted curve, he forecast "peak oil" in the near future. Not only that, he extended the curve to estimate total ultimate production when reserves were exhausted.

The journal Technological Forecasting and Social Change has carried several articles pointing out the flaws of this approach to forecasting the limit of a growth curve using data from the lower half. The results can be badly misleading, and the method is not recommended for any forecasting use. (full disclosure: I'm on the editorial board of that journal).