Predicting the end of oil age

Some think petroleum output has hit its peak – or that it will shortly.

Hubbert’s Peak isn’t a place. It’s the top of a theoretical curve representing worldwide oil production. But its real-world implications could be earthshaking.

The theory is named for M. King Hubbert, a geologist who correctly predicted the recent decline in U.S. oil production decades before it happened.

The least-controversial part of the theory is that because oil is a nonrenewable resource – unlike, say, water or air – its production will peak some day and that a graph of its production will eventually resemble a standard bell-shaped curve, with Hubbert’s Peak at the top.

The peak’s location depends, obviously, on how much oil the world will someday yield, on top of the roughly one trillion barrels that have already been produced.

Philadelphia Inquirer