Introduction to Peak Oil

This book examines the physical andeconomic characteristics of the global oil resource to explain why peak oil hasbeen so poorly understood. The author draws on information held in oil industrydatasets that are not widely available outside of the specialist literature,and describes a number of methods that have been successfully used to predictoil peaks. In contrast to the widely-held view that ‘all oil forecasts arewrong’, these methods correctly predicted the current peak in globalconventional oil production. Current oil forecasts are then compared toevaluate the expected dates for regional and global oil peaks for conventionaloil, all-oils, and all-liquids. The dates of global peaks in the production ofall-oil and all-liquids appear to be reasonably soon, while the oil price thatis needed to support these global production levels continues to rise. Theworld faces serious constraints in its oil supply, which accounts for aboutone-third of total world energy use, and over 90% of the fuel used fortransportation. Readers of this book will gain a thorough understanding of thecritical, but poorly understood, phenomenon of peak oil that has already hadsignificant impacts on society in terms of high oil prices, and which willplace increasing constraints on mankind’s supply of energy and economicwell-being in the coming years.