BP chief bets ‘peak oil’ backer ouput will keep rising

BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward is putting money on the line to dispute the theory of peak oil, according to his counterparty in the wager Kjell Aleklett, a professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University.

Hayward bet Aleklett the price of one barrel of oil in 2018 that global crude production will be greater than the current daily output of 85.5 million barrels, the professor said during his speech at the Asia Oil and Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur. Total supply was 86.8 million barrels a day, including natural gas liquids such as propane.


Aleklett heads the global energy systems department at Uppsala and is the chairman of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas. Peak oil theory holds that production will reach a zenith of 87 million barrels a day sometime around 2010 and then start declining, according the group’s findings.

“I am upset that the bet is so low, only the price of one barrel of oil,” Aleklett said to laughter from the audience. Crude oil futures reached a record $139.12 a barrel in New York on June 6 and have more than doubled in the past year. The July contract was trading at $133.86 a barrel at 9:38 a.m. in London.

Bloomberg