Peak Oil Revisited

Hubbert’s Peak or Yergin’s Plateau?
In 1956, Shell geologist M. King Hubbert correctly predicted that oil production in the United States would reach a peak around 1970. Since his Peak Oil theory fits so well with the Malthusian worldview of “Progressives”, anti-capitalists and anarchists, Hubbert has become a posthumous hero to the Left, an unusual role for a scientist polluted by the filthy lucre of the oil industry.

Hubbert's depiction of Global Peak Oil. From Wikipedia.

Peak Oil’s fundamental assumption is that the supply of oil is finite and fixed. The peak of the oil production curve is reached when half of the total resource base has been produced, so rate vs time exhibits a symmetric bell-shaped curve. Post peak, rate declines rapidly. Hubbert demonstrated a peak for oil production in Texas, and he extended his theory to correctly predict the time (but not the rate) of the peak for the U.S. World oil production is supposed to have peaked in the last five years or so.