Financial Express: Step on the gas with shale

Bruce Nussbaum, in his book World after Oil, published in the early 1980s, dealt with the oil crisis of 1970s, when oil prices had risen from $5 to $30 per barrel, and showed how the world dealt with the crisis by investing more in exploration, especially on the high seas, and severely reduced energy consumption. Thus, oil prices remained stable for many years, and started rising again in the 2000s once new finds reduced. I recall Swaminathan Aiyar’s “Challenge of Hubbert’s Peak”, in which he said oil prices will rise fast, and the world production will not be able to meet the rising demand of China and India. American geophysicist M King Hubbert had predicted in the 1950s that US oil production would peak (‘Hubbert peak’ after which production declines) in 1970, and it did. The entire world then started looking at the far more expensive options of nuclear and non-conventional power, which would have thwarted growth rates.

Stephen Leeb first attracted world opinion on the issue of energy crises with his book The Oil Factor, published in 2004. In it, he had predicted an outlandish price of $100/barrel for crude by the end of the decade. When prices started rising much faster than anticipated, he wrote another bestseller in 2006, The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel. MORE