Let's consider the last 40 years of trash-talk about peak oil.

H. King Hubbard's stone cold observation simply states that over time oil wells have a productive lifecycle.

• So early on from the start of production the well has increasing efficiency as borings and such are completed.

• Peak usefulness/efficiency when the needed borings are in place and extraction is most cost-beneficial.

• A slow decline, after which technological efforts to recover more oil become increasingly cost inefficient.

He was over the course of years ostracized from the energy business & community that contracted his work in the first place - because he championed being away from energy production by way of oil/gas.

So every well undergoes this lifecycle, and in old or very old age, producers pump water or other fluids into the well to keep extraction efficiency up.

The downside is that eventually, the ratio of water/oil increases to the point where your well is effectively full of mostly water.

Here's the problem, in the late 1990's wells produced in the 1960's with very efficient means of production started to go dry. Just as wells from the 1900's went dry in the 1940's when Hubbert's research was commissioned.

The spin, up until around 2005-6 was that Hubbert was a crank, a misanthrope and really not very bright after all.

Sadly , among the things they really couldn't say was that he was substantially wrong. In this or that particular, perhaps, but in general his production model holds up really well over time.

But it wasn't until the Saudi mega well, Al-Ghawar started to go dry, or rather started to become substantially inefficient that we see serious reactions.