[ROCKMAN]

Andy - "...from that he forecast US CO peak and a global peak, adding in some undiscovered resources." And I'll emphasize it again: those "undiscovered resources" were those not yet discovered in the POPULATION of the trends he analyzed. There was no production history of the US shale, DW GOM, DW Brazil or other tends in that projection. Think of a simple statistical analysis: a box with 10,000 black and white marbles in it. You pull out 8,000 and 30% of them are block. You think you can make a decent guess of how many black marbles are left in the bag? But what if I dump another box with an unknown number of black marbles into the first box...what's your guess now? But even Hubbert's population wasn't randomly developed. The larger fields tend to be discovered first with smaller ones discovered later. Not to take away from his work but folks should remember that when he made his prediction of a 1971 US PO the vast majority of the oil in THOSE TRENDS he was projecting had already been produced. He was just predicting the scraps left.

Which would be the same analysis I could do for the US oil shales...in 2035. With a 30 year production history of those trends I bet I can make a much more accurate projection than everyone can do today. Folks can call what they're doing a Hubbert style analysis but unless they are using stats from very mature and well defined trends...they aren't. Which doesn't mean their methodology might not be valid but tagging it as Hubberty doesn't necessarily enhance credibility. We have a bunch of smart folks here that don't need to stand on Dr. H's shoulders.