Peak Oil. Are We There Yet?

Lindsey Grant
November 19, 2007
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In the 1950s, Shell Oil geologist M. King Hubbert predicted that oil production in the United States would peak about 1970 and thereafter inescapably drift downward. He was generally derided, but production did indeed peak in 1970. After that, several other petroleum geologists applied “Hubbert’s curve” to world recoverable oil resources, and many of them arrived at a peak sometime between 2005 and 2025. They were dismissed shrilly by the oil companies and others who have a stake in more or less perpetual oil supplies, but their predictions are looking better and better.

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Lindsey Grant

Lindsey Grant is a retired Foreign Service Officer; he was a China specialist and served as Director of the Office of Asian Communist Affairs, National Security Council staff member, and Department of State policy Planning staff member. As Deputy Secretary of State for Environmental and Population Affairs, he was Department of State coordinator for the Global 2000 Report to the President, Chairman of the interagency committee on Int'l Environmental Committee and US member of the UN ECE Committee of Experts on the Environment. His books include: Too Many People, Juggernaut, The Horseman and the Bureaucrat, Elephants in Volkswagen, How Many Americans?

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