The History of the Oil Industry

In the mid-1950s, a shell oil geologist named Marion King Hubbard observed that the production profile of any given oil field has a predictable shape and looks approximately like a bell curve. In the interest of staying focused on events that relate directly to the subject of this docuseries, I'm going to fast forward just over half a century to the next event relevant to the topic at hand. At the peak, you're nowhere close to running out of oil in the reservoir. There's plenty of oil left down there. But it takes more and more work and therefore, expense to produce each additional barrel.