What is Peak Oil and what are the implications for the main transport Essay

What is Peak Oil and what are the implications for the main transport modes (cars; trucks; trains; ships; aircraft) - Essay Example The notion of peak oil is founded on the Hubbert peak theory. This being the case, peak oil can loosely be taken to mean the point in time at which petroleum extraction has reached its maximum rate and production will henceforth decline terminally (Brandt 2007, p. 3078). Different models have been applied in an attempt to forecast the future production of oil and the time at which the production of oil will reach its peak. Hubberts’ prediction of future oil supply and production was arrived at by plotting annual production divided by cumulative production for the specific year against cumulative production (Watts 2011). While the Hubbert forecast model relies on a single production cycle per country to predict the future of oil production, the model used by the University of Kuwait is multicyclic in nature (Arvizu 2010). Some of the factors that are considered in the multi-cyclic models include: government regulations, technology advances, political events, and economic conditions (Arvizu 2010). In estimating the global production of oil, researchers that were affiliated to the Kuwait University analysed the production cycles of 47 oil producing nations (Anderson & Conder 2011, p. 1582). The models produced from the data drawn from these anal yses were then combined to estimate global production as noted by Nashawi, Malallah and Al-Bisharah (2010, 1794, p. 1792). The model applied by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to predict the future production of oil, however, is not based on the Hubbert model. The EIA model relies on reserves to production (R/P) ratios to predict future production levels (Garza 2011). Figure 1 presents oil production estimates based on R/P ratios. Some experts have estimated that 2020 is the year to look out for as it will mark the beginning of the decline in oil production. Other experts have, however, given more pessimistic predictions with some noting that peak production of