OVERVIEW

We now come to a semi-philosophical concept: the idea of an Ultimate recovery. How can anyone contemplate the ultimate of anything: it is like thinking about infinity. We naturally shy away from any such idea, which is foreign to our way of life, our attitudes and experience. Yet all of us do have knowledge of depleting a finite resource: our own life-span. We are not immortal. Most of us do not however dwell on the thought of our deathbed, or the depletion of our lives: we comfort ourselves with the hope of advancing medical technology and defying the average. The hard-bitten insurance companies approach the subject with more reality when they use actuarial tables to say that I have a life expectancy of only thirteen more years.

So it is with oil. It is a decidedly finite resource, with its own life-span, about which we care not to think. In this chapter, I will discuss how to estimate that life-span. As we shall see, oil is in fact approaching its middle age, or the midpoint of depletion.

Are we running out of oil? is a question that is often asked. The short answer is, yes: inevitably we are, but not for a long time . What matters more is the less often asked question: When do we reach peak production? After peak comes shortage, assuming that the demand for oil continues to grow unabated, as it is more than likely to do with the world s expanding population and growing global...