Get ready for $400-a-barrel oil

GRAND FORKS – Last week, the price of oil reached $100 a barrel. This came as a surprise to some people, but it should not have done so. The world is running out of oil, and no amount of wishful thinking can change this fact.

A recent book by David Strahan predicts the price will quadruple to $400 a barrel within the next five years.


In 1956, Shell geologist M. King Hubbard delivered a paper at the American Petroleum Institute meeting in San Antonio. He predicted that U.S. oil production would peak around 1970 and decline after that. Although Shell and many other U.S. oil companies said Hubbard’s ideas were crazy, 15 years later, he was found to be correct.

Today, U.S. oil production continues to fall, just like production from many of the world’s oil producing countries. The amount of oil discovered in the world has decreased each year since around 1965. New discoveries total about 10 billion barrels a year, down from a peak of more than 60 billion barrels.

Grand Forks Herald