was right, for his prediction was confirmed in 1972 when the Texas Railroad
Commission abandoned rationing oil production. The commission
had been mandated from the time of the Great Depression to ration how
much oil would be transported, which meant that production in the Gulf
Coast was also rationed. Now, there was no longer any need to do that
because production was on the decline. Proving that nothing is as good
as success, the confirmation of the U.S. oil peak, which was now narrowed
to 1970, vindicated Hubbert—who became a celebrity—and gave
birth to what is now known as the “Hubbert Curve” theory.
The current oil peak debate started around 1995 but stayed off the
radar because it was drowned by the tech boom of that decade. It was
started by geologists who used Hubbert’s theory to determine global oil
peak, something far more difficult than what Hubbert did. It was difficult
because it depended on a larger volume of data, some of which are either
difficult to find or are unreliable, especially data from the Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
For the most part, these geologists and energy economists fought it out
in the pages of scientific journals—Nature, Science, and Scientific
American—before they found publishers willing to give them a larger audience
through books. First to fire a salvo was Craig Bond Hatfield, who
in 1997 published in Nature a commentary article entitled “Oil Back on
the Global Agenda,”3 which argued that “a permanent decline in the
global oil production rate is virtually certain to begin within 20 years,”
adding that “serious planning is needed to deal with the economic consequences.”
A year later, Richard A. Kerr published an article in Science entitled
“The Next Oil Crisis Looms Large—and Perhaps Close,”4 which
pretty much made the same points, although in much more alarming language.
Kerr was the first to brand the debate as a conflict between economists,
who argue that technological advances would expand production
for another 40 or 50 years, by which time alternative fuel sources would
have matured, and geologists, who warn that oil will begin to run out
much sooner than we expect because there’s just no more oil to be found
even with advanced technology. Kerr’s 1998 prediction for peak oil was 10
years, which would be in 2008. The debate took off in earnest after Colin
Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère wrote a joint article in Scientific American
arguing for the end of cheap oil.5 The article touched off a huge debate in
the oil industry because Campbell and Laherrère are both highly respected
geologists and have worked for major oil companies in senior
THE END OF AN ERA? 21