Testing Hubbert

The Hubbert theory of oil depletion, which states that oil production in large regions follows a bell-shaped curve over time, has been cited as a method to predict the future of global oil production. However, the assumptions of the Hubbert method have never been rigourously tested with a large dataset. In this paper, the Hubbert theory of depletion is tested against five alternative models, using a set of 139 oil production curves. These curves are sub-national (United States state-level, United States regional-level), national, and multinational (subcontinental and continental) in scale. Best-fitting curves are generated for each region using the six models, and the quality of fit is compared across models. We also test two assertions that have been made with respect to oil depletion: that production over time in a region tends to be symmetric, and that production is more bell-shaped in larger regions than in smaller regions. ∗I would like to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Anand Patil, Alex Farrell, and Jim Kirchner in the preparation and revision of this paper.