Peak Oil II: Global Peak Oil Production Can Only Decline Now

SOCORRO, New Mexico (STPNS) — In the previous piece we saw that the history of oil exploration in the United States suggested that production rises steadily to a peak, at around 50 percent of total oil reserves. This peak also marks the onset of declining production. This decline occurs without any plateau, beginning the year after peak, and declining inexorably at a rate between 1 percent and 2 percent per year. For the United States, this peak occurred in 1970, exactly 40 years after the peak of oil discovery in 1930.

Here we will apply the American experience to attempt to predict the timing of global peak oil, the time after which world oil availability will steadily decrease. The problem with such predictions is that many oil-producing countries exaggerate their true oil reserves, while Government agencies, including here in the USA, often accept such exaggerations.


A case in point is the clear exaggeration of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, oil reserves. It is never easy to precisely calculate how much oil remains in a field or a country, but prior to the 1980s OPEC reserve calculations were based on geological reality. However, at that point OPEC announced that the amount of oil that member nations could sell on the world market would be proportional to their oil reserves – more reserves, more exports, more money.

This led to a sudden jump in claimed oil reserves, in a single year