Peak oil

By Good Magazine

June 2, 2017

Peak oil does not mean the world is running out of oil: it refers to the point of maximum production, after which the availability of oil will steadily decline.

Ten convienient truths about peak  oil

PHOTO: futureatlas.com from Flickr

  1. Peak oil does not mean the world is running out of oil: it refers to the point of maximum production, after which the availability of oil will steadily decline.
  2. Once oil production peaks, the price of oil—and everything that uses oil in its production and transportation—is likely to increase, unless alternatives are found.
  3. The peak theory was first proposed in 1956 by geophysicist Marion King Hubbert, who correctly predicted the US peak of oil production in 1970.
  4. Hubbert observed that the first half of oil reserves is the easiest and least expensive to extract.
  5. The International Energy Agency (IEA), which represents most western governments including the UK and US, says production from the world’s existing oil fields is declining at a rate of 6.7 percent a year.
  6. Only one supergiant field (with more than five billion barrels of oil) has been found since 1980.
  7. Because world population has grown faster than oil production, production per capita peaked back in 1979.
  8. The world’s oil reserves and future energy demands are extremely difficult to measure, so peak oil will only be pinpointed after the moment has occurred.
  9. Debate is heated, but a growing number of analysts and observers believe we are either very close to peak oil production, or we recently passed it.
  10. Shell predicts that oil production will plateau in 2015. Last year the IEA predicted a plateau in 2020—its first acknowledgement that oil production will peak.

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