production positions. More recently, Kenneth S. Deffeyes, a Princeton
geologist who worked at Shell with Hubbert and later became a disciple
of the man who has become the patron saint of “global peak oil” proponents,
joined the debate as a pessimist.
A few years ago, these followers of Hubbert did what has become
common in our troubled world. They formed a lobbying group, the Association
for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), to create public awareness of
the impending problem and convince everyone that we have reached a
fork in the road and must decide which way to take. Campbell, an Irishman
with a doctorate from Oxford, chairs the group, with Kjell Aleklett,
a Swede who is a professor at Uppsala University, acting as president.
Also joining the group were American professors Deffeyes, David Goodstein
of California Institute of Technology, Brian J. Skinner of Yale, and
Houston-based energy banker Matt Simmons.
Those who have tried to understand the processes involved in determining,
indeed predicting an oil peak, know just how scientific it is.
Hubbert used a great deal of intricate mathematical formulae, which no
one understood at the time and economists have struggled to disprove,
not so much with any new scientific evidence as by arguing that rising
demand would prompt scientists to come up with new technologies that
would get more oil. That’s hardly a thoughtful approach; it’s more like
relying on hope. One of Hubbert’s critics, American economist Michael
C. Lynch, has argued that oil is not a finite resource and that recoverable
reserves can be expanded by using better technology, if the price is right,
by which he meant that higher oil prices would prompt producers to use
advanced technology to increase oil supply. Although some writers have
misunderstood Lynch, his position is actually quite simple, as it is based
on nothing more than demand and supply principles of economics.
Lynch, who runs his consulting firm, Strategic Energy and Economic
Research, Inc. (SEER) in Winchester, Massachusetts, told me during an
interview on February, 28, 2006, that peak oil proponents “ignore most
of the data and the reality” that disprove their point of view. The data
Lynch was referring to are those published by industry publication Oil &
Gas Journal that revised global reserves upward some years ago on the
basis of better technology. While agreeing with oil peak proponents that
reserves recovery was declining at an increasing rate, the journal argued
that better technology would eventually enhance the recovery factor of
existing reserves. “They pretend that revisions don’t exist, but they [revi-
22 THE END OF OIL