UKERC Review of Evidence for Global Oil Depletion - Technical Report 6: Methods of forecasting future oil supply

This systematic review assesses the insight offered by thesemethodologies and critically evaluates their usefulness in projecting future oil production.It focuses on models that project future rates of oil production, and does not address themodeling or estimation of oil resources (e.g., ultimately recoverable resources, or URR).Models reviewed include the Hubbert methodology, other curve-fitting methods, simulations of resource discovery and extraction, detailed bottom-up models, and theoretical and empirical economic models of oil resource depletion. Important examples of published models are discussed, and the benefits and drawbacks of these models are outlined. I also discuss the physical and economic assumptions that serve as the basis for the studied models.