Chase Manhattan Predicted Peak Oil in 1956

Fifty two years ago – on March 8, 1956 – famed geologist and geophysicist M. King Hubbert stepped to the podium at the Spring meeting of the Southwest Section of the American Petroleum Institute and delivered a speech predicting that U.S. oil production would peak within 10-15 years. When oil did in fact peak in 1970, Hubbert enjoyed several years of acclaim and public attention during the mid to late 1970s. Hubbert


After the world peak in total petroleum liquids occurs, we will likely be told that the permanent energy crisis we are experiencing was a result of our not understanding energy or perhaps ignoring some obscure experts. We will likely be told that our energy policy of the past really was not an energy policy but that no one really knew what was happening at the time – that it was all just misguided, unorganized optimism and that we could not have done anything differently given the circumstances of the time. This is far from the truth.

In reality, all the information was on the table in the decade of the 1950s. Recoverable resource estimates in 1950s – which have proven to be highly accurate – indicated that we needed to be very careful with how we planned our future. Various experts including Hubbert, Pogue and Hill of Chase Manhattan Bank, and Andrew Crichton predicted that U.S. oil, natural gas, and coal resources could not possibly support a high growth economy for any reasonable length of time. A rational review of the recoverable resource estimates of the time suggests that we needed to begin a long term plan to create a sustainable society based on proven renewable energy sources.

Instead, key individuals in government, think tanks, and corporations opted to use their influence and decision making capacity to forward a perpetual high-growth economy dependent on high-grade finite fossil fuels in the hopes that technology would make low-grade resources economic over time. They believed that speculative technological advances including coal to liquids, oil shale, breeder reactors, fusion, and enhanced oil recovery would become economic in the long run, thereby justifying the continuing growth of a consumerist suburban, car-oriented way of life and fueling the development of a highly industrial globalized system for the rest of the world.

Channeling Hubbert