An excellent analysis Success_Machine. Nicely done.

I personally feel the peak will be sooner than that, but that's just my opinion. Mainly because I do not support the inclusion of shale oil and tar sands into the reserves as the USGS does. And that I believe most reserves are over-reported.

Furthermore, it may not be a single peak, but a series of peaks. Or a longer plateau. Especially as production is raised or lowered in response to international developments.

But the most important comparison aside from Hubbert's discovery-production curves is the comparison of production and demand curves. As these diverge, the price starts to climb. Therefore, in response to Gary's question, I'm in the market for a hybrid NOW. The sooner we start to utilize alternatives (and despite my gloomy tone at times, I believe we can develop alternatives) the longer we can extend the oil we do have.

Here's an article from monday (4-19-2004) on the BBC website: When the last oil well runs dry. I recommend the other articles in this series as well.

Here's a list of recent articles compiled by the folks at the Association for the study of peak oil:

Articles of interest