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146 comments on The Net Hubbert Curve: What Does It Mean?
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146 comments on The Net Hubbert Curve: What Does It Mean?
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Ivanhoe on Hubbert 1997
-------------------------------------------------web/20060902171235/hubbert.mines.edu/news/Ivanhoe_97-1.pdf
Hubbert says: “The curve does not keep going up, but passes over a hump and then goes back to zero. This is the one
future point on the curve that you definitely know and it greatly facilitates the mathematics. The area
under the (production) curve is graphically proportional to the amount of development. The area under
the curve cannot exceed your estimate. It is a very simple, but very powerful method of analysis.”1 “This complete cycle has only the following essential properties: The production rate begins at zero, increases
exponentially during the early period of development, and then slows down, passes through one or more
principal maxima, and finally declines negative exponentially to zero. There is no necessity that the
curve P as a function of t, have a single maximum or that it be symmetrical. In fact, the smaller the region,
the more irregular in shape is the curve likely to be. On the other hand, for large areas such as the United
States or the world, the annual production curve results from the superposition of the production from
thousands of separate fields. In such cases, the irregularities of small areas tend to cancel one another and
the composite curve becomes a smooth curve with only a single practical maximum. However, there is no
theoretical necessity that this curve by symmetrical. Whether it is or is not will have to be determined by
the data themselves.”2
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Ivanhoe says:" Hubbert wrote virtually nothing about details of the “decline side” of his Hubbert Curve, except to mention that the
ultimate shape of the decline side would depend upon the facts and not on any assumptions or formulae. The decline
side does not have to be symmetrical to the ascending side of the curve - it is just easier to draw it as such, but no rules
apply. The ascending curve depends on the skill/luck of the explorationists while the descending side may fall off more
rapidly due to the public’s acquired taste for petroleum products - or more slowly due to government controls to reduce consumption."
Yep and just like my brief foray into mathematics I busted my ass to discover this only later to find out
that the Gods has already figured it out :(
However the fact that I independently reached the exact same conclusion should be of importance.
I'm sure over the next few years a lot more people are going to understand in painful detail what these paragraphs mean.
When Oilmen state things like "There is enough oil left in the ground to maintain current rates of consumption for X years" there is an implicit assumption that if no new oil is found then at the end of 'X' years there will be a cliff down to zero.
Any new oil found simply extends 'X' a bit, makes up for any drops in current output or raises the 'current rate of consumption' variable when translated into pumped oil...
I guess it is highly unlikely to hear one of them say: "demand for our product will decline over the remainder of the century because its price will repeatedly become so high that fewer and fewer people will be able to afford the benefits it bestows" -It's just not good sales talk is it? :o)
Nick.