By JUSTIN LAHART
November 13, 2006; Page C1
Ever since oil prices started falling from their peak levels this summer, investor interest in the idea of peak oil has declined as well.
But peak oil isn’t about the economics of oil but the geology of it. “Price is a very murky window with which to figure out what’s happening with oil supply,” says Ken Deffeyes, a retired Princeton geology professor and leading peak-oil proponent.
Peak-oil theory says that when half of the world’s oil has been pumped out of the ground, oil production is at its peak. A steady ratcheting up of oil prices ensues as demand outpaces supply. When that happens won’t be known for sure until years after the fact. Meantime, demand for oil is running so close to supply, plenty of other things can make for sharp price movements, says Mr. Deffeyes.
He estimates that oil production peaked on Dec. 16 last year, close to his long-held prediction that it would peak on Thanksgiving 2005. Depending on which production figures you look at, his timing looks iffy, at best. Then again, when somebody accustomed to thinking in geological time offers such a precise estimate, he’s probably pulling somebody’s leg.
Peak oil got its start with the late M. King Hubbert, a Shell Oil geophysicist who determined that when an oil field was half depleted it had hit peak production and was set for a decline. He estimated in 1956 that U.S. oil production would peak around 1970. “Hubbert’s Peak” was scoffed at in the oil business. Mr. Deffeyes, who worked under Mr. Hubbert in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was one of the few geologists who reckoned Mr. Hubbert was right. Which he was — U.S. oil production peaked around 1970.
Critics argue that applying Hubbert’s theory to the entire world is wrongheaded. There could be undiscovered reserves out there. In September, a group of oil companies announced that they had drawn oil from deep within the Gulf of Mexico, opening what could be the biggest source of U.S. oil since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay.
Mr. Deffeyes he suspects that major new finds can help ease a decline in global production, but not stop it.
The answer to whether he’s right won’t be found in any price chart, but in the ground.
Write to Justin Lahart at [email protected]
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
