Encircling the peak of world oil production – an evaluation

At the ASPO conference in Houston, October 2007, I gave a presentation on Saudi Oil reserves and a production forecast that was born out of several posts by Stuart Staniford, myself and others which are linked at the end of this article. In my talk (which can be found here on the ASPO server) I presented the forecast shown below and afterwards an elderly gentleman who I did not know at that time, was keen to show me a paper that he and Richard Duncan had published some 8 years earlier that was titled “Encircling the peak of World Oil Production”. The gentleman, who I would later learn was Walter Youngquist wanted to show me that their forecast for peak Saudi oil production was 2011, the same date which I had determined from a rather different approach.
Duncan and Youngquist forecast that world oil production would peak at 30.64 Gb/ annum in 2007 translating to 83.95 mmbpd. According to BP, 2007 production was 81.44 mmbpd that was exceeded by 81.82 mmbpd in 2008. It is of course premature to call 2008 as peak year although I am increasingly skeptical that the 2008 production will ever be exceed. If Duncan and Youngquist’s unbiased accuracy follows through to Brazil and the 4 big gulf producers – Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, then this will underpin their 2007 peak oil forecast, reinforcing the view that 2008 saw the passing of peak oil.

Duncan and Younquist tell us that peak oil will be buried in a bumpy plateau and that a number of years must pass before it will be evident from declining production that peak has indeed passed. The exact timing is unimportant. The important thing is the knowledge that we are within the plateau and that some scientists do understand the above and below ground factors leading to peak and that their warnings of decline past peak and its consequences should not be ignored.

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