U.S. oil supply was about to peak. Soon, U.S. petroleum reserves would
reach an all-time maximum. Then they would begin to shrink as oil companies
extracted crude from the ground faster than geologists could find
it. That was all right.
Hubbert knew that some oil fields, especially the big ones, were easier
to find than others. Those big finds would come first, and then the pace
of discovery would decline as the remaining pool of oil resided in progressively
smaller and more elusive deposits. The production figures followed
a similar pattern, but it looked as if they would peak a few years
later than reserves. That also was convincing. In any case, oil can’t be
pumped out of the ground the instant it is discovered. Lease agreements
have to be negotiated, wells drilled, pipelines built; the development
process can take about 10 years or more.
When Hubbert extended the production curve into the future it
looked as if it would peak about 1969 or 1970. Every year after that, the
United States would pump less oil than it had the year before. If that prediction
wasn’t daring enough, Hubbert had yet another mathematical
trick up his sleeve. Assuming that the reserves decline was going to be a
mirror image of the rise, geologists would have found exactly half of the
oil in the Lower 48 when the curve peaked. Doubling that number gave
Hubbert the grand total of all recoverable oil under the continental
United States: 170 billion barrels.
At first, critics objected to Hubbert’s analysis, arguing that technological
improvements in exploration and recovery would increase the
amount of available oil. They do, but not enough to extend production
beyond the limits Hubbert had projected. Even if you throw in the unexpected
discovery of oil in Alaska, U.S. petroleum production history has
proceeded almost exactly as Hubbert predicted it would. Contemporary
critics of Hubbert dismiss the oil peak at their peril. “Even in 30 to 40
years there’s still going to be huge amounts of oil in the Middle East,”
said Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies
at the University of California, Davis.17
Yet the critics are missing the larger point. A few years ago, geologists
began applying Hubbert’s methods to the entire world’s oil production.
Their analyses indicated that global oil production would peak some
time during the first decade of the twenty-first century. And so in the
wake of China’s robust demand growth, signs of global warming, and
THE END OF AN ERA? 37