Hubbert

In 1956, M. King Hubbert, chief consultant for the Shell Development Company's exploration and production research division, forecasted that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s. He subsequently updated this prediction using newer data, but the predicted timing of peaking did not change significantly (see Hubbert [1982] for a review and references to earlier papers). In 1971, U.S. annual production of crude oil peaked at slightly more than three billion barrels (bbl). Yet, Hubbert's model continues to be challenged by some. For instance, according to economist Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, Inc., Winchester, Mass., it was only after Hubbert published his predictions “that the Hubbert curve came to be seen as explanatory in and of itself, that is, geology requires that production should follow such a curve” [Lynch, 2003].

Published in: EOS (Transactions American Geophysical Union), Volume 87, Issue 20, May 2006, Pages 199-219
Available from: American Geophysical Union

M. King Hubbert’s 1956 prediction of a ‘peak’ in US oil production has spurred a durable and divisive debate on the exhaustion of the petroleum resource. Pitting physical against economic explanations of resource scarcity, the peak oil debate has seemingly sunk into the well-worn grooves of a long history of scarcity debates. Yet, as this paper argues, this ‘stale dichotomy’ can partly be attributed to a severance from the contexts and ideas that informed Hubbert’s mathematical calculations. Specifically, this paper examines the broader influences on the peak oil model: Hubbert’s career in the newly formed field of geophysics; his personal concern with the relationship between energy and population growth; and his ties to Technocracy, Inc., a social movement originating in the US that aimed to replace political and business control with a group of specialist engineers and technicians. The paper further emphasizes the importance of institutional and political interests to the arguments launched against Hubbert, and in motivating change in this opposition over time. Last, it makes the case that the contemporary de-contextualization of Hubbert’s model has contributed towards a narrow focus of discussions within the oil industry and in certain governments on predicting the timing of a global peak, without addressing the wider questions implied by Hubbert’s model.

Published in: Geoforum, article in press
Available from: ScienceDirect