Robert L. Hirsch: Planning for the Mitigation of Maximum World Oil Production

A framework is needed for planning the mitigation of oil shortages created by world oil production reaching a maximum and going into decline. Some argue that normal market evolution will be adequate to avoid shortages. We assume that will not be the case.

In dealing with such matters, the best that can be hoped for is to bracket mitigation requirements, because the myriad of variables and unknowns do not allow precision. Accordingly, our analysis involves consideration of order of magnitude economics, past real-world experience, forecasts of future world oil production, and possible oil exporter behavior.


Considerations of oil shortages, as distinguished from simply considering oil price increases, necessitates dealing in an area in which there is no recent experience, since the world today is different from 1973 and 1979, when brief shortages occurred. We approach this challenge with the belief expressed in Oil Shockwave: