In the past few years a number of publications have assertedrnthat world oil production is near peak due to geologicallyderivedrnscarcity. Although these analysts purport to bernscientific, they are in fact merely curve fitting. Within a fixed,rngeologically homogenous basin it is possible to modelrndiscovery sizes. But at the national level, political factorsrnsuch as fiscal régimes, access to perspective areas,rntechnological challenges in different basins, and therneconomics of given plays tend to be determining. At thernglobal level, demand determines production while politicsrnheavily influences discoveries. That most of these analystsrnrely heavily on unproven-or disproven--assumptions isrnindicative of the quality of their research.rnIn fact, forecasting of both discoveries and supplies isrnextremely difficult, because of the uncertain nature of fieldrnsize and because of the heavy influence of individual nationalrneconomic conditions-infrastructure as well as fiscalrnrégimes-and heavy restrictions on drilling by the privaternsector. Scarcity can be very roughly estimated by looking at arnnumber of factors, including costs and reserve values,rndiscovery size, drilling density, and well productivity, andrnnone of these supports the alarmist views of a peak in worldrnoil production over the next decade or two.rnThe importance of petroleum to world economy can hardly bernoverstated and is not at issue, nor is the importance of thernadequacy of future oil supplies. But consideration of theserntopics should be based on real evidence and hard researchrnrather than polemics. Much of the writings of the past fewrnyears, while aimed at a general audience, have not added tornour knowledge of the subject and have often been misleading.rnThere is a significant body of research on petroleum supplyrnbehavior, but much of it is ignored in the current debate.
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