Free Republic

There is an open secret in the oil industry that dare not speak its name: peak oil. Well, two did speak its name and gained no acclaim for it. One, M. King Hubbert, died years ago. The other and the most controversial, Matthew Simmons, died at his Maine summer home Aug. 8. The peak oil idea is simple: Oil is a finite commodity, and one day we are going to use up all of it. Hubbert, a geologist, began speculating on the effects of the gradual decline in worldwide production in the 1950s. He expressed this in a simple graph,...

World oil prices pushed up to $67 a barrel last week. Is it just a seasonal phenomenon, a reflection of summer driving patterns, a sign of Saudi intransigence, a conspiracy by the oil companies? Perhaps. But far more likely, it has something to do with Hubbert's Peak. In 1956, Shell Oil geologist M. King Hubbert made a startling prediction. Judging from the rate new oil was being discovered, he calculated that American oil production would reach its peak in 1969. The prediction received little attention. After all, people had been predicting that oil would eventually run out since Colonel Drake...