Читать книгу Practical Sustainability Strategies - George P. Nassos - Страница 19

In 1956, M. King Hubbert, a scientist with Shell Oil, proposed that fossil fuel production in a given region over time would follow a roughly bell-shaped curve without giving a precise formula [14]. Hubbert assumed that after fossil fuel reserves are discovered, production at first increases approximately exponentially, as more extraction commences and more efficient facilities are installed. At some point, a peak output is reached, and production begins declining until it approximates an exponential decline as shown in Figure 1.3.

The Hubbert curve suggests that the oil production rate increases as more reserves are discovered, and the rate peaks when half the estimated ultimately recoverable oil is produced. This is followed by a falling production rate, all along a classic bell curve. This same analysis has shown that it took 110 years to produce about 225 billion barrels of crude oil in the United States, but half of that oil was produced in the first 100 years and the second half in the next 10 years. In the United States, Hubbert predicted that this production rate peak would be achieved in 1970, the year when half of the estimated ultimately recoverable oil was utilized and then production would start its steady decline. That in fact is what happened when the United States lost its preeminence as the world's leading producer of oil and caused a spike in gasoline prices and long lines at the pumps. His prediction that the United States would peak in oil production in 1970 actually came true although it peaked 17% higher than he projected, and its pathway since has not followed the bell-shaped curve he predicted. On a global basis, this milestone was expected to occur around the year 2010. What has happened since Hubbert's predictions is that more reserves have been discovered and new extraction technologies have been applied? It is now expected that the current oil reserves will last another 50 years [15]. Based on a similar analysis, natural gas reserves are good for 53 more years and coal reserves for at least 100 years.

FIGURE 1.3 Hubbert's peak.