Hubbert Curve

Hubbert Curve

The Hubbert curve is a bell-shaped curve used to describe the supply of oil available to meet demand. It is a production curve of crude oil in a free market economy that is symmetric and named after geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who developed the Hubbert peak theory in the 1970s. It is a basic tool used in forecasting future oil production and determining the likely peak in production of any oil-producing region.From: Hybrid Vehicles [2019], Feasibility Study of Wave Power in Ghana [2022], Sustainability [2017], Energy Portfolios [2019]

Nonrenewable Resources: Oil and Minerals

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Published in John C. Ayers, Sustainability, 2017

John C. Ayers

To understand better why we can expect to have future shortages of nonrenewable resources such as oil, we refer to Figure 6.2, which plots hypothetical production rates of renewable and nonrenewable resources as a function of time. For nonrenewable resources with open material cycles, that is, ones that are not or cannot be recycled, resource production curves are bell-shaped. These Hubbert curves are named after geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who developed the Hubbert peak theory in the 1970s.

Feasibility Study of Wave Power in Ghana

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Published in International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, 2022

Samuel Kofi Tulashie, Raphael Odai, Adeola Michael Dahunsi, Sandra Atisey, Jacking Amenakpor

As depicted in Figure 1, the well-known ‘Hubbert curve’ says that the production curve of a crude oil in a free market economy is ‘bell shaped’ and symmetric (Hubbert 1962). According to this model, once the potential of oil is identified, it is necessary to locate its reserves, build appropriate wells, and set up a system for the transportation and its use. Oil consumption grew when these resources are created. There will be a stage when it will be challenging to find new oil resources, its utilisation will decline and it will be more demanding (Hubbert 1962). However, this model applies to the use of conventional energy sources such as fossil fuel but cannot be applied to the wave energy source since waves are renewable sources of energy and regenerate itself (Dunlap 2015).

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