Happy Birthday Peak Oil! Commemorating the 51st Anniversary of M. King Hubbert’s Seminal Speech, the Hubbert Tribute site ( www.mkinghubbert.com) has released a 1976 video clip of Hubbert speaking about world oil depletion and explaining the concept of peak oil.
Several years after his startlingly accurate prediction that the U.S. would peak in 1970 and in the context of the 1970s energy crisis, Hubbert speaks about the theoretical Hubbert curve which suggested a worldwide peak of oil extraction in 1995. In the past several years, Hubbert and his predictive model have been roundly criticized by detractors such as CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates) because world oil extraction did not peak in 1995 and still has yet to peak.
Hubbert clearly articulates that the OPEC countries had already by 1976 changed their production profiles such that his world production curve would likely be shifted by about ten years. He also speculates that the growth rate at the time could also be flattened in the future which could also change the curve.
The video clip and the transcript are at www.mkinghubbert.com.
The Hubbert Tribute is embarking on a new and currently unfunded research project to uncover more contextual information about M King Hubbert’s work and to better understand how U.S. energy policy was architected over the past half century. We are looking for donations as well as volunteers that live in, or near, or are interested in traveling to the following locations for doing archival research for source materials:
New York Metropolitan Area
Boston Area
Washington DC Area
Los Angles Area Atlanta Area
Abilene, Kansas
Laramie, Wyoming
Phoenix, Arizona
Tulsa Oklahoma
Potential donors and volunteers should contact Jason Brenno at [email protected].
About the Hubbert Tribute
The Hubbert Tribute raises awareness of and celebrates M King Hubbert’s accomplishments so that industrial society can better understand the contemporary significance of his work. The site initially came online to commemorate the 50th anniversary of M. King Hubbert’s speech on March 8, 1956 to a regional conference of the American Petroleum Institute, forecasting 1970 to be the peak year of annual oil extraction in the United States. All peak oil discussion of recent years stem from Hubbert’s startling prediction more than a half century ago.
