I was first introduced to the concept of “peak oil” 15 years ago. It was a simple theory: Oil is a finite resource. At some point in time, the world’s ability to increase oil production would ultimately “peak.” And this peak would be followed by a terminal decline in global output. The theory has been around for almost a century. But the man who popularized the idea was an American geophysicist named M. King Hubbert. In 1956 Mr. Hubbert presented a research report to the American Petroleum Institute that predicted oil production in the United States would peak in 1970. Turns out he was right. U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 at 9.6 million barrels per day. And production did decline afterwards. But Hubbert didn’t see one thing coming: hydraulic fracking. Hydraulic fracking and other enhanced oil recovery methods were successfully introduced in the new millennium, allowing U.S. oil […]