forecasting methodologies

According to the long term scenarios of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), conventional oil production is expected to grow until at least 2030. EIA has published results from a resource constrained production model which ostensibly supports such a scenario. The model is here described and analyzed in detail. However, it is shown that the model, although sound in principle, has been misapplied due to a confusion of resource categories. A correction of this methodological error reveals that EIA’s scenario requires rather extreme and implausible assumptions regarding future global decline rates. This result puts into question the basis for the conclusion that global “peak oil” would not occur before 2030.

Published in: Energy Policy, article in press
Available from: ScienceDirect or Global Energy Systems

A range of forecasts of global oil production made between 1956 and the present day are listed. For the majority of these the methodology used to generate the forecast is described. The paper distinguishes between three types of forecast:

• group 1—quantitative analyses which predict that global oil production will reach a resource-limited peak in the near term, and certainly before the year 2020;
• group 2—forecasts that use quantitative methods, but which see no production peak within the forecast’s time horizon (typically 2020 or 2030);
• group 3—nonquantitative analyses that rule out a resource-limited oil peak within the foreseeable future.

The paper analyses these forecast types and suggests that group 1 forecasts are the most realistic.

Published in: Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design Volume 35, Issue 4, Pages 609–626
Available from: Environment and Planning