Oil peak predicted for year 2020

Development of the globe’s remaining untapped oil reserves will push world production to its ultimate peak as early as 2020, before a long, slow decline begins near mid-century, petroleum experts predicted Tuesday.

Peak production levels, estimated to reach 950 million barrels daily, are expected to last between 20 and 30 years before gradually tapering off, giving economies across the globe a final window of opportunity to begin transitioning to alternative energy sources or face increasingly fierce competition for the fossil fuel, authorities said at the annual American Association of Petroleum Geologists convention in Long Beach.
“The peak in world oil production is not imminent, but is nevertheless foreseeable,” said Richard Nehring, an independent petroleum geologist who addressed the conference Tuesday. “Ultimately, world oil production decline will be inescapable in the latter half of the 21st century.”

The estimation comes in the wake of a global conference held last November in Colorado, where petroleum geologists representing every oil-producing region of the world predicted mankind’s remaining oil supplies.

They noted that while it took 140 years to consume the world’s first

trillion barrels of oil, the next trillion will be used within 30 years.

Press Telegram