『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.
Keywords: Peak oil; Logistic curves; Extraction costs』
1. Introduction
2. Logistic function and variations
3. Deterministic model
4. Marginal extraction costs
5. Optimization model
5.1. Large resource base
5.2. Lower resource base
5.3. Additional parameters
6. Discussion and conclusions
Acknowledgments
References