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 rigorously tested with a large, publicly available data set. In this paper, three assumptions of the modern Hubbert theory are tested using data from 139 oil producing regions. These regions are sub-national (United States state-level, United States regional-level), national, and multi-national (subcontinental and continental) in scale. We test the assumption that oil production follows a bell-shaped curve by generating best-fitting curves for each region using six models and comparing the quality of fit across models. We also test the assumptions 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. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.