This book examines the physical and
economic characteristics of the global oil resource to explain why peak oil has
been so poorly understood. The author draws on information held in oil industry
datasets that are not widely available outside of the specialist literature,
and describes a number of methods that have been successfully used to predict
oil peaks. In contrast to the widely-held view that ‘all oil forecasts are
wrong’, these methods correctly predicted the current peak in global
conventional oil production. Current oil forecasts are then compared to
evaluate the expected dates for regional and global oil peaks for conventional
oil, all-oils, and all-liquids. The dates of global peaks in the production of
all-oil and all-liquids appear to be reasonably soon, while the oil price that
is needed to support these global production levels continues to rise. The
world faces serious constraints in its oil supply, which accounts for about
one-third of total world energy use, and over 90% of the fuel used for
transportation. Readers of this book will gain a thorough understanding of the
critical, but poorly understood, phenomenon of peak oil that has already had
significant impacts on society in terms of high oil prices, and which will
place increasing constraints on mankind’s supply of energy and economic
well-being in the coming years.