Sunday, August 25, 2013

Who said that peak oil models were wrong?


An impressive graphic (click to enlarge) from a recent presentation by Jean Laherrere. The text is partly in French, but it is easy to understand the main results of the study. In the figure above, we see how well the world's oil production has followed the models over nine years. On this point, Laherrere says "There is little difference between the forecasts of 2004 and those of 2013. The difference is smaller than the precision of the measurements" A remarkable result that vindicates the soundness of the "peak oil" theory. 

The main difference between today and nine years ago is the appearance in the picture of the "non conventional" resources. With these new resources, we may be able to stretch the availability of liquid fuels for some more years, as long as we'll be able to pay their high costs. But we keep following the expected path and the news about the death of peak oil truly seem to be a bit exaggerated.



Who

Ugo Bardi is a member of the Club of Rome, faculty member of the University of Florence, and the author of "Extracted" (Chelsea Green 2014), "The Seneca Effect" (Springer 2017), and Before the Collapse (Springer 2019)