Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage By Kenneth S. 27
February, 2004 of the of the book "Hubbert's Peak: The Impending
World Oil Shortage" By Kenneth S. Deffeyes oil production will
probably reach a peak sometime during this decade. After the
peak, the world's production of crude oil will fall, never to
rise again. The world will not run out of energy, but developing
alternative energy sources on a large scale will take at least
10 years. The slowdown in oil production may already be
beginning; the current price fluctuations for crude oil and
natural gas may be the preamble to a major crisis. In 1956, the
geologist M. King Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil production
would peak in the early 1970s.1 Almost everyone, inside and
outside the oil industry, rejected Hubbert's analysis. The
controversy raged until 1970, when the U.S. production of crude
oil started to fall. Hubbert was right. Around 1995, several
analysts began applying Hubbert's method to world oil
production, and most of them estimate that the pea