A new predictive angle on when Peak Oil will hit

Swedish graduate student Fredrik Robelius, a physicist and petroleum engineer at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, uses a “bottom-up” approach, versus the top-down version of traditional Hubbert’s Peak modeling, but still arrives at a similar prediction as more pessimistic Hubbert’s modelers.

He says the peak could hit next year and should hit by 2018.

Robelius built his model, which serves as his doctoral dissertation, after analyzing the fields’ past production rates and their ultimate recoverable reserves. Then he predicted how production will decline after peaking by incorporating rates of drop-off observed at other fields, ranging from six percent in a best-case scenario to 16 percent in a worst-case scenario. Finally, he combined his results with estimated forecasts for new field developments from sources such as the deep ocean and oil sands in Canada, but he says that these are unlikely to offset the upcoming declines from the giant fields — and there is little chance that new giant fields will be discovered in the future.

Of course, he’s already being poo-poohed by energy analysts with too much invested in believing otherwise.

The lack of giant field discovery is a no-brainer. No megafield has been discovered since Alaska’s North Slope, well over 30 years ago. And, some megafields of the present, like Mexico’s Cantarell, and British/Norwegian North Sea production, will be lucky if they only decline mildly in the next several years rather than plunging off a cliff.