Marion King Hubbert

Marion King Hubbert , called King Hubbert, (born October 5, 1903 in San Saba , San Saba County , Texas , † October 11, 1989 in Bethesda , Maryland ) was an American geologist and geophysicist . He worked for the Shell research laboratory in Houston and made various significant contributions to geology and geophysics, some of which also have an impact on political issues ( peak oil , energy policy ). He is often referred to as “M. King Hubbert "or" King Hubbert "referred to. Hubbert was a prominent member of the technocratic movement .

Life

Hubbert attended the University of Chicago , where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1926 , a Master of Science degree in 1928 and a Ph.D. in 1937. acquired. He studied geology, mathematics and physics. While working on his Ph.D, Hubbert spent two years as a geologist for the Amerada Petroleum Company . From 1943 to 1964 he worked for the Shell Oil Company . He then worked for the United States Geological Survey ( USGS ) as a geophysicist in research and official statistics until 1976. At the same time, Hubbert was Professor of Geology and Geophysics at Stanford University from 1963 to 1968 and at the University of California, Berkeley from 1973 to 1976 .

research

Hubbert made various contributions to geophysics, including a mathematical proof that rock in the earth's crust behaves plastically due to the enormous pressures and shows a flow behavior similar to clay. This evidence explains why the earth's crust deforms over long periods of time.

Hubbert's best-known studies deal with the capacity of coal , oil and gas fields . He assumed that the development of oil production in a field over time resembles a logistic function . At the 1956 meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in San Antonio, Texas, Hubbert predicted that US oil production would peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He became famous when that prediction was confirmed in 1970. The curve he used for analysis is known today as the Hubbert curve, and the "peak" as the oil production maximum (English Hubbert peak or peak oil ).

In 1974, he predicted the global production maximum for 1995. The determination of the global peak was based, like his prediction from 1956 for the USA, on a series of assumptions that he made from his experience. In today's retrospect, his forecast of the global production maximum in 1995 was incorrect. A look at his assumptions, however, shows that, above all, he estimated the assumed increase in consumption to be much higher than then occurred. He obviously underestimated this consequence of the two great oil crises.

Between October 17, 1973 and March 1974, OPEC reduced the export of petroleum to the United States and Europe. This caused the 1973 oil crisis. In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences confirmed Hubbert's calculations on the decline in oil and gas production and announced that their own, more optimistic, estimates were incorrect. This drew a great deal of media attention to Hubbert.

Honors

Hubbert was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957). He was long associated with the Geological Society of America . In 1954 he received the Arthur L. Day Medal from her . He was elected President of the Society in 1962 and received the Society's Penrose Medal in 1973 . In 1981 he received the Vetlesen Prize from the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and Columbia University .

Fonts (selection)

• Structural Geology. Hafner, New York 1972.

literature

• Mason Inman: The oracle of oil: a maverick geologist's quest for a sustainable future . New York: WW Norton & Company, 2016

Web links

• M. King Hubbert. hubbertpeak.com, website with data on Hubbert and further links (English)
• Hubbert Bibliography Compilation Project. Bibliography by Hubbert at hubbertpeak.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Environmental Decision making, Science and Technology. 
2. ↑ Cutler J. Cleveland, "Biophysical economics" , Encyclopedia of Earth , September 14 of 2006.
3. ↑ Research on Hubbert's role at TI (PDF; 2.5 MB), p. 41.
4. ^ M. King Hubbert: Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels. (PDF) (No longer available online.) In: Drilling and Production Practice. American Petroleum Institute, March 7, 1956, p. 40 , archived from the original on May 27, 2008 ; Retrieved on November 17, 2018 (English): "If we suppose the figrue of 150 billion barrels to be 50 billion barrels to low - an amount equal to eight East Texas oil fields - then the ultimate potential reserve would be 200 billion barrels. The second of the two extrapolations shown in Figure 21 is based upon this assumption; but it is interesting to note that even then the date of culmination is retarded only until about 1970. (p. 24) “ Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Hubbert's forecast from 1974 for a "peak oil" occurring in 1995 .