What is Peak Oil?
The term “peak oil” is used to describe the point at which the earth’s supply of oil will no longer be able to meet our energy needs. Oil is not a renewable energy source, and therefore can and will be exhausted at some point in the future. There is still a lot of debate about the projected date of peak oil due to our inability to accurately take stock of current world oil supplies. As early as the 1950’s geologists have been warning of an oil supply collapse. M. King Hubbert noticed a logistics curve in oil discoveries and based on these findings he predicted that there would be a global oil peak between the year 1995 and 2000. » Source: Black Hills (Video) Peak Oil is the simplest label for the problem of energy resource depletion, or more specifically, the peak in global oil production. Oil is a finite, non-renewable resource, one that has powered phenomenal economic and population growth over the last century and a half. The rate of oil ‘production,’ meaning extraction and refining
All oil production follows a bell curve, whether in an individual field or on the planet as a whole. On the upslope of the curve production costs are significantly lower than on the downslope when extra effort (expense) is required to extract oil from reservoirs that are emptying out. Put simply: oil is plentiful and cheap on the upslope, scarce and expensive on the downslope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the world’s endowment of oil has been 50% depleted. Peak Oil is the industry term for the top of the curve. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.
