[vision-master]

When Will the Peak Hit?




$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')espite modern society's heavy dependence on oil for energy, most people are aware that the supply is finite. The trillion-dollar question for experts is, when will the oil supply peak? In other words, at what point will half of the world's reserves have been extracted? In 1956 geologist M. King Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil supplies would peak between 1968 and 1972. He was right—it peaked in 1970.

Today oil analysts have adapted Hubbert's formula as they try to calculate the world's oil supply. Some experts think we've already reached the halfway mark; others think we might not reach it until the middle of the century. But most analysts believe we'll reach it sometime between 2010 and 2020. Determining the peak is important, because once half the oil has been extracted from a reservoir, it becomes increasingly difficult, geologically and economically, to pump more from the same location. Companies often have to use expensive secondary recovery methods, including injecting massive amounts of water, to extract more oil.

[americandream]

I'm standing on it at the moment and the ride down looks disconcerting.

[joewp]

A good article by Paul Roberts is linked there too. He must've been reading one of OilFinder's threads and thought he'd point out some uncomfortable facts.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Yet even oil optimists concede that physical limits are beginning to loom. Consider the issue of discovery rates. Oil can't be pumped from the ground until it has been found, and yet the volume discovered each year has steadily fallen since the early 1960s—despite dazzling technological advances, including computer-assisted seismic imaging that allows companies to "see" oil deep below the Earth's surface. One reason for the decline is simple mathematics: Most of the big, easily located fields—the so-called "elephants"—were discovered decades ago, and the remaining fields tend to be small. Not only are they harder to find than big fields, but they must also be found in greater numbers to produce as much oil. Last November, for example, oil executives were ecstatic over the discovery off the Brazilian coast of a field called Tupi, thought to be the biggest find in seven years. And yet with as much as eight billion barrels, Tupi is about a fifteenth the size of Saudi Arabia's legendary Ghawar, which held about 120 billion barrels at its discovery in 1948.

[alokin]

There was only the link to the National Geographic article.
The Huseini (hope I remember the name right, the former Amraco guy)
must have had some graphics and different scenarios, which are not printed in the National Geographic.

[SILENTTODD]

I assume it's now, but hope maybe the Cornucopians are right and I have a couple of more years to prepare!