IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v51y2012icp586-597.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Logistic curves, extraction costs and effective peak oil

Author

Listed:
  • Brecha, Robert J.

Abstract

Debates about the possibility of a near-term maximum in world oil production have become increasingly prominent over the past decade, with the focus often being on the quantification of geologically available and technologically recoverable amounts of oil in the ground. Economically, the important parameter is not a physical limit to resources in the ground, but whether market price signals and costs of extraction will indicate the efficiency of extracting conventional or nonconventional resources as opposed to making substitutions over time for other fuels and technologies. We present a hybrid approach to the peak-oil question with two models in which the use of logistic curves for cumulative production are supplemented with data on projected extraction costs and historical rates of capacity increase. While not denying the presence of large quantities of oil in the ground, even with foresight, rates of production of new nonconventional resources are unlikely to be sufficient to make up for declines in availability of conventional oil. Furthermore we show how the logistic-curve approach helps to naturally explain high oil prices even when there are significant quantities of low-cost oil yet to be extracted.

Suggested Citation

  • Brecha, Robert J., 2012. "Logistic curves, extraction costs and effective peak oil," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 586-597.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:51:y:2012:i:c:p:586-597
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2012.09.016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421512007744
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.09.016?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reynolds, Douglas B. & Baek, Jungho, 2012. "Much ado about Hotelling: Beware the ides of Hubbert," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 162-170.
    2. Hirsch, Robert L., 2008. "Mitigation of maximum world oil production: Shortage scenarios," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 881-889, February.
    3. de Castro, Carlos & Miguel, Luis Javier & Mediavilla, Margarita, 2009. "The role of non conventional oil in the attenuation of peak oil," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1825-1833, May.
    4. Soderbergh, Bengt & Robelius, Fredrik & Aleklett, Kjell, 2007. "A crash programme scenario for the Canadian oil sands industry," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1931-1947, March.
    5. Lutz, Christian & Lehr, Ulrike & Wiebe, Kirsten S., 2012. "Economic effects of peak oil," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 829-834.
    6. Kaufmann, Robert K. & Gonzalez, Nancy & Nickerson, Thomas A. & Nesbit, Tyler S., 2011. "Do household energy expenditures affect mortgage delinquency rates?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 188-194, March.
    7. Kaufmann, Robert K. & Shiers, Laura D., 2008. "Alternatives to conventional crude oil: When, how quickly, and market driven?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 405-411, October.
    8. Bentley, R.W. & Mannan, S.A. & Wheeler, S.J., 2007. "Assessing the date of the global oil peak: The need to use 2P reserves," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 6364-6382, December.
    9. Sorrell, Steve & Speirs, Jamie & Bentley, Roger & Brandt, Adam & Miller, Richard, 2010. "Global oil depletion: A review of the evidence," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(9), pages 5290-5295, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert J. Brecha, 2013. "Ten Reasons to Take Peak Oil Seriously," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-31, February.
    2. Delannoy, Louis & Longaretti, Pierre-Yves & Murphy, David J. & Prados, Emmanuel, 2021. "Peak oil and the low-carbon energy transition: A net-energy perspective," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 304(C).
    3. Lucas Fievet & Zal`an Forr`o & Peter Cauwels & Didier Sornette, 2014. "Forecasting future oil production in Norway and the UK: a general improved methodology," Papers 1407.3652, arXiv.org.
    4. Fiévet, L. & Forró, Z. & Cauwels, P. & Sornette, D., 2015. "A general improved methodology to forecasting future oil production: Application to the UK and Norway," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 288-297.
    5. Hallock, John L. & Wu, Wei & Hall, Charles A.S. & Jefferson, Michael, 2014. "Forecasting the limits to the availability and diversity of global conventional oil supply: Validation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 130-153.
    6. Ansari, Dawud, 2017. "OPEC, Saudi Arabia, and the shale revolution: Insights from equilibrium modelling and oil politics," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 111, pages 166-178.
    7. Griffiths, Steven, 2017. "A review and assessment of energy policy in the Middle East and North Africa region," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 249-269.
    8. Chavez-Rodriguez, Mauro F. & Szklo, Alexandre & de Lucena, Andre Frossard Pereira, 2015. "Analysis of past and future oil production in Peru under a Hubbert approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 140-151.
    9. Vladimir Litvinenko, 2020. "The Role of Hydrocarbons in the Global Energy Agenda: The Focus on Liquefied Natural Gas," Resources, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-22, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert J. Brecha, 2013. "Ten Reasons to Take Peak Oil Seriously," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-31, February.
    2. Delannoy, Louis & Longaretti, Pierre-Yves & Murphy, David J. & Prados, Emmanuel, 2021. "Peak oil and the low-carbon energy transition: A net-energy perspective," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 304(C).
    3. Fantazzini, Dean & Höök, Mikael & Angelantoni, André, 2011. "Global oil risks in the early 21st century," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 7865-7873.
    4. Sena, Marcelo Fonseca Monteiro de & Rosa, Luiz Pinguelli & Szklo, Alexandre, 2013. "Will Venezuelan extra-heavy oil be a significant source of petroleum in the next decades?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 51-59.
    5. Sorrell, Steve & Speirs, Jamie & Bentley, Roger & Brandt, Adam & Miller, Richard, 2010. "Global oil depletion: A review of the evidence," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(9), pages 5290-5295, September.
    6. Höök, Mikael & Tang, Xu, 2013. "Depletion of fossil fuels and anthropogenic climate change—A review," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 797-809.
    7. Dale, Michael & Krumdieck, Susan & Bodger, Pat, 2011. "Net energy yield from production of conventional oil," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(11), pages 7095-7102.
    8. Capellán-Pérez, Iñigo & Mediavilla, Margarita & de Castro, Carlos & Carpintero, Óscar & Miguel, Luis Javier, 2014. "Fossil fuel depletion and socio-economic scenarios: An integrated approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 641-666.
    9. Harvey, L.D.D., 2013. "Global climate-oriented transportation scenarios," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 87-103.
    10. Logar, Ivana & van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M., 2013. "The impact of peak oil on tourism in Spain: An input–output analysis of price, demand and economy-wide effects," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 155-166.
    11. Aleklett, Kjell & Höök, Mikael & Jakobsson, Kristofer & Lardelli, Michael & Snowden, Simon & Söderbergh, Bengt, 2010. "The Peak of the Oil Age - Analyzing the world oil production Reference Scenario in World Energy Outlook 2008," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1398-1414, March.
    12. de Castro, Carlos & Miguel, Luis Javier & Mediavilla, Margarita, 2009. "The role of non conventional oil in the attenuation of peak oil," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1825-1833, May.
    13. Chavez-Rodriguez, Mauro F. & Szklo, Alexandre & de Lucena, Andre Frossard Pereira, 2015. "Analysis of past and future oil production in Peru under a Hubbert approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 140-151.
    14. McGlade, C.E., 2012. "A review of the uncertainties in estimates of global oil resources," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 262-270.
    15. van Ruijven, Bas & van Vuuren, Detlef P., 2009. "Oil and natural gas prices and greenhouse gas emission mitigation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4797-4808, November.
    16. van Moerkerk, Mike & Crijns-Graus, Wina, 2016. "A comparison of oil supply risks in EU, US, Japan, China and India under different climate scenarios," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 148-158.
    17. Mercure, Jean-François & Salas, Pablo, 2013. "On the global economic potentials and marginal costs of non-renewable resources and the price of energy commodities," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 469-483.
    18. Ali Mirchi & Saeed Hadian & Kaveh Madani & Omid M. Rouhani & Azadeh M. Rouhani, 2012. "World Energy Balance Outlook and OPEC Production Capacity: Implications for Global Oil Security," Energies, MDPI, vol. 5(8), pages 1-26, July.
    19. Dale, Michael, 2012. "Meta-analysis of non-renewable energy resource estimates," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 102-122.
    20. Waisman, Henri & Rozenberg, Julie & Sassi, Olivier & Hourcade, Jean-Charles, 2012. "Peak Oil profiles through the lens of a general equilibrium assessment," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 744-753.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:51:y:2012:i:c:p:586-597. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.