The Oil Drum

And there is the second large mistake that Lynch is using. He looks at production curves of nations and concludes from that that nations do not have an neat gaussian production curve. Then Lynch states that oil production is influenced by politics more then by geolological restraints.

See this UK graph

But Lynch doesn't realise that by looking at nations he specificaly is looking at political units while large culsters of oilfields most often do not lie in a single political unit. If you look at production curves of the North Sea in total you come to the astonishing conclusion that even when the UK's production curve might not fit a gaussian curve, the Northsea's resembles it far more closely.

Iraq is another example of a "wierd" production curve which is influenced by politics. Yet the world production curve is driven by demand, so if one poltical unit fails to deliver another will come up with the difference.

By looking at the production curves of nations political influences on the world are wildly exaggerated.