Abstract
Modern civilization as it is known to us heavily depends on hydrocarbon fluids and their byproducts. So far, the industrialized nations have completely presumed for granted an uninterruptable supply of cheap crude oil. Petroleum liquids are exhaustible resources; thus, a good forecasting scheme of oil supply will be crucial to all parties involved in the petroleum business such as oil companies, financial institutions, public policy planners and makers, and oil exporting and importing countries. Such a model will also help bring stability and security to the crude oil market. Over the years, accurate prediction of oil production was confronted by fluctuating ecological, economical, and political factors, which imposed many restrictions on its exploration, transportation, and supply and demand.
The objective of this paper is to illustrate the advantages of the multi-cyclic Hubbert model. We will demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model for the cases where the production rate fluctuates with time. We will also illustrate the effects of new discoveries or additional reserves due to innovative technology on peak oil rate and time and show how the multi-cyclic model accommodates these changes. Furthermore, we will demonstrate the flexibility of the proposed model to history match any future fluctuation in the production data. Historical production data of 47 countries around the world are used to predict the peak oil. The production rates of the last four years (2006-2009) are used to validate the accuracy of the model.
