Ecologist says oil-supply peak nearing

United States will be particularly affected, analyst says

PEORIA – The world’s supply of oil will peak in just a few years, plunging the world’s economy into recession, ecologist Robert Heinberg told about 165 people at the Holiday Inn City Centre on Saturday.

The United States, heavily dependent on foreign oil, will be particularly affected, said Heinberg, a faculty member of the New College of California, where he teaches “Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community.”

Heinberg is an advocate of the “peak oil theory,” introduced in the 1950s by M. King Hubbert, a geologist working for Shell Oil Co. Hubbert argued that because oil is a finite resource, it will someday run out. He predicted that the United States’ oil production would peak in the early 1970s. It has been in decline since then.

There are various predictions about when global oil production will peak, most of them within the next 20 years.

“We’ve entered the peaking period,” Heinberg said.

Peoria Journal-Star