$4 Gas: Fueling Our Fears

The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline crossed the dreaded $4 per gallon threshold Thursday in Eugene and Springfield, after the price of oil doubled in the past year to more than $130 a barrel. According to the AAA, regular gas in area now averages $4.02 a gallon.

Some analysts say the prices are driven by speculators, and that they can’t stay this high. But Walter Youngquist, a petroleum geologist in Eugene, says it will only get worse. We’ve only just begun to feel the effects of the declining supply of a finite resource.


“I don’t think people recognize what peak world oil production really means,” Youngquist said. “The peak and then decline of world oil production, which is upon us now, will affect more people in more ways than any other event in human history.”

The concept of peak oil was developed in 1956 by a Shell Oil geologist. While the idea remains controversial, rapidly rising oil prices are lending credence to it. Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens is among the believers, recently predicting oil will hit $150 a barrel by the end of the year.

Youngquist was a geology professor for the University of Oregon in the 1950s and 1960s, and worked in the oil industry for nearly 50 years, checking oil prospects in more than 70 countries. In a 1999 article he and co-author Richard Duncan surveyed oil production data from 42 countries and concluded world oil production would peak in 2007.

Youngquist has seen nothing since then to make him think he was wrong.

“We have gone through, in 200 years, essentially the world supply of oil,” he said.

Register-Guard