Category:Peak oil

Peak oil is the point at which we can no longer increase the amount of crude oil we extract and globally petroleum production goes into irreversible decline. It is not when the oil runs out!

This typically happens when an oil province has extracted roughly ½ of all the oil that is ever going to be extracted from that province.

Oil production peak follows oil discovery peak, usually 25-40 years later. This is the time it takes to get production going after the initial finding. In country after country and oil province after oil province the pattern is broadly the same. Globally we are now discovering 1 barrel of oil for every 5 or 6 that we use.