As Prices Soar, Doomsayers Provoke Debate on Oil's Future
BALLYDEHOB, Ireland -- As he sat last month in his book-lined study, Colin Campbell got a phone call that made him shriek with joy.
"Holy Mother!" he yelped after he put down the receiver. "The good ol' moment's arrived!"
The call had brought word that the price of crude oil was shooting up -- a climb that, in the days that followed, would take it to near $50 a barrel. To Dr. Campbell, a 73-year-old retired oil-industry geologist who lives in this coastal Irish village, this was sweet vindication. It meant that the "moment" he had been predicting for about 15 years -- the beginning of the end of the age of oil -- might finally be at hand.
Dr. Campbell is at the center of a small but suddenly influential band of contrarians known as the peak-oil movement. They see cause for alarm in the fact that since the early 1980s the world has been pumping more oil out of the ground than it's been finding. By as early as next year, they say, humanity will have reached a point of reckoning: It will have extracted half the oil it will ever get. Once that "peak" is reached, Dr. Campbell says, global oil production will start falling, never to rise again.
The peak would mark the end of cheap oil. Although people would probably keep using oil for another century or so, prices would steadily rise. To maintain economic growth, the world would have to become radically more energy-efficient, shifting quickly to alternatives such as solar and nuclear power. If the switch wasn't fast enough -- an outcome Dr. Campbell thinks more likely -- the global economy would screech to a halt.
"The perception of this decline changes the entire world we know," says Dr. Campbell, whose wife affectionately calls him Mr. Doomsday. "Up till now we've been living in a world with the assumption of growth driven by oil. Now we have to face the other side of the mountain."
People have been incorrectly predicting oil's demise since the industry's early days, and the peak-oil movement has yet to make a serious dent in the energy policies of the U.S. and other developed nations. But the debate is flaring up with new intensity because of some powerful forces changing the geopolitics of oil, among them the rise of an oil-guzzling China and persistent instability in the Middle East and Russia.
The oil industry calls Dr. Campbell a crackpot. Since he began writing about a looming peak, the industry notes, he has progressively postponed his predicted date, from 1995 to 2005. This roughness of the numbers, the industry says, points to a more fundamental problem with the peak-oil theory: It underestimates the power of technology to find more oil -- indeed, to broaden the concept of oil itself.
That this debate can occur points to a striking fact: Nobody really knows how much oil exists. More to the point, nobody knows how much can be gotten out of the ground. Much of the oil lies in places with volatile politics, including the Middle East, Russia and Africa. Further complicating the calculation: Beyond the pool of conventional oil that the industry can easily extract today lie vast stores of hydrocarbons that, until recently, haven't been thought of as oil. Among them: tar-soaked sands in Canada and oil-laden shale rock in places including the western U.S.
So far, over the approximately 150 years since the first oil well was drilled, the world has burned through about 900 billion barrels. Dr. Campbell thinks the world will be able to pump out about that much more. The industry, however, contends Dr. Campbell is being far too pessimistic. Exxon Mobil Corp., for instance, estimates there are something like 14 trillion barrels of fossil fuel still in the ground, including the tar-soaked sands and other nonconventional forms. It figures the industry can extract a good chunk of that.
If Dr. Campbell and his colleagues are right, then nations should rush to promote fuel efficiency to minimize economic upheaval. If they're wrong, but the world follows their advice anyway, then huge sums of money could be wasted jumping to alternative energy sources that, while environmentally friendly, would be more expensive than oil.
"We're running out, but not in any important way. We're running out so slowly it doesn't matter," says Michael Lynch, an oil-industry consultant who has emerged as a leading critic of the peak-oil theorists. At some point, the world will shift from oil to other energy sources, Mr. Lynch agrees. But he says there's plenty of oil to ensure that transition will happen smoothly -- long before the world hits the last drop. The world, he notes, "changed from horses to cars, and we didn't run out of oats."
For years, Dr. Campbell has been visited in Ballydehob, a village of about 300 people southwest of Cork, by a stream of visitors he describes as "fringes" -- among them a Louisiana woman who drives a van powered by vegetable oil and a British couple moving to Australia to live off the land.
Mainstream Attention
But suddenly Dr. Campbell is receiving mainstream attention. In the past few months, he has spoken before a joint committee meeting of the British House of Commons and addressed about 200 J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. investors by conference call from Ballydehob. This month two officials from AB Volvo, the truck and engine maker, visited from Sweden. His theory, if right, would force vehicle makers to revamp their lineups.
Also this month, PFC Energy, a respected Washington energy-consulting firm, released a report essentially endorsing Dr. Campbell's gloomy prediction. PFC puts the peak a bit further out than Dr. Campbell does -- sometime between 2010 and 2015. But Michael Rodgers, the PFC senior director who coordinated the report, agrees with Dr. Campbell that the precise year of the peak is less important than the conclusion that it is coming.
Mr. Rodgers says PFC officials debated whether to stake their reputation on the side of those whose pessimistic predictions have been wrong before. But they concluded that the decline in global oil discoveries has become so pronounced that the industry can't count on technological breakthroughs to bail it out in time.
"Part of the problem that Campbell suffers from is that he's been saying this for 20 years. People have gotten to the point where it's like the boy crying wolf," Mr. Rodgers says. "We believe his current predictions are closer to being accurate than they ever have been before. But unfortunately, because he's said this so often, people are skeptical."
No one disputes that for the past two decades, the world has been pumping out more oil than it has found in new fields. And consumption is rising quickly, meaning the gap could widen. By 2030, predicts the Paris-based International Energy Agency, global oil consumption will jump to 120 million barrels a day from 82 million barrels a day now.
But critics such as Mr. Lynch argue there's every reason to assume that discoveries will revive. They contend that the decline in discoveries since the 1960s isn't an inexorable trend but an artifact of economic forces. Today's supply crunch, by pushing up oil prices, should give the industry an incentive to figure out how to extract more of the oil still in the ground.
Dr. Campbell's analysis is clouded by his "conservative, Malthusian bias," charges Mr. Lynch, 49, who works out of a bedroom office in his house in Amherst, Mass. Mr. Lynch's clients include the U.S. Department of Energy as well as Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Aramco. Mr. Lynch has written several papers that pick at the peak-oil theory in painstaking detail. His latest one, complete with a three-page bibliography, alleges "a pattern of errors and mistaken assumptions presented as conclusive research results."
Dr. Campbell so dislikes Mr. Lynch that he has declined invitations to appear with him in debates. "It's like asking a doctor to talk about medicine with a faith healer," Dr. Campbell says. He calls Mr. Lynch "the high priest of the flat-earth economists."
Alarms that the world is running out of oil have long been sounded. In 1875, just 16 years after Edwin Drake drilled what's generally regarded as the world's first commercially successful oil well in Pennsylvania, the state's chief geologist warned that it soon would run out of oil. He was wrong.
Hubbert's Graph
Today's peak-oil theorists are the intellectual descendants of the late M. King Hubbert, an American oil geologist. In 1956 he published a foreboding graph featuring a bell-shaped curve. At the time, the U.S. still was the world's top oil producer, while production was still ramping up in the Middle East. Dr. Hubbert figured that the rise and fall of oil production in a nation would follow the pattern of a single well. A peak in oil discovery would come first; then, years later, production would peak as engineers got out the oil. Once discoveries started falling, production would too -- but only after a gap of about 40 years, Dr. Hubbert estimated. Since discoveries in the continental U.S. had peaked around 1930, his graph showed production peaking around 1970 and then dropping off.
Dr. Hubbert was derided when he released the graph, which came to be known as Hubbert's Peak. By the early 1970s, however, the facts had proved him right. The U.S. no longer produced the bulk of the world's oil. Production was rising fast in Middle Eastern nations, the Soviet Union and South America.
Then, in 1973, the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries tightened their spigots, and the world panicked. The result: high prices, long lines and frequent shortages at gas stations across the U.S. and Europe.
Suddenly, the future of oil was an urgent international concern. Just as America's oil supply had gone into decline, skeptics warned, now the entire globe was beginning to run out of oil. In 1979, James Schlesinger, the Carter administration's departing energy secretary, declared that world oil production had nearly peaked.
Mr. Schlesinger also turned out to be wrong. The oil industry came up with new technology, including three-dimensional seismic imaging, to reduce the number of dry holes. Oil production continued to climb.
Dr. Campbell was pushing as hard as anyone to find new oil. He had entered the industry just as it was starting to boom in the late 1950s. For the next three decades, he rode the industry's rise, prospecting for oil from the mountains of Colombia to Norway's North Sea coast.
The insight that would transform him from oil hunter to oil skeptic came in 1989, a year before he retired. Backed by Fina, his final employer, he conducted a study for the Norwegian government on how much oil the world had left. The study calculated Hubbert-style curves for countries around the world and tallied them up. Dr. Campbell's conclusion, laid out in a 1991 book: World-wide oil production would peak around 1995.
Since then he has updated the calculations several times. In the mid-1990s, he says, he and a colleague switched from using publicly available data to a private consultant's database, which shows production by individual oil fields. That information, he says, prompted an alarming discovery: The world's oil producers were finding a lot less oil than their official numbers suggested.
Oil producers report their hydrocarbon stocks in a category called "proved reserves," which means oil that's been found and can reasonably be expected to be extracted using current technology. It's seen by the market as a fundamental indicator of how well the oil industry is doing replenishing its stocks.
What oil producers should do, Dr. Campbell says, is add the entire capacity of an oil field to their reported reserves in the year they first tap the field. What they actually do is dribble that field's capacity into their reported reserves bit by bit over a number of years.
The problem with that incremental accounting approach, Dr. Campbell says, is that it gives the world the false impression that it has plenty of oil. It disguises the less-rosy truth, he argues, which is that massive oil-field discoveries are largely a thing of the past.
Mr. Rodgers, the PFC senior director, says he is convinced that Dr. Campbell's criticism is valid. He says oil production is either reaching a plateau or declining in 33 of 48 major oil-producing countries, including six of the 11 OPEC countries. Mr. Rodgers also points to a separate set of numbers. Over the past decade, he says, the percentage of major oil companies' exploration-and-production budget that has gone to exploration has dropped to about 12% from about 30%. That, he reasons, is because they have concluded that there aren't many more large caches of oil for them to profitably find.
"Despite the fact that we're in the highest oil-price era, the level of exploration is not increasing," Mr. Rodgers says. "The reason it's not increasing is that, in so many regions of the world, the fields have gotten so small that even though you might be able to drill a well and get a positive rate of return, the incremental value doesn't mean a lot."
Oil-industry executives reject this analysis. For one thing, publicly traded oil companies are required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to report their reserve additions in the incremental way that Dr. Campbell distrusts. That requirement, they note, reflects the reasoning that a pool of oil shouldn't be claimed as an asset unless its owner is able to pump it out. Being able to pump it out, in turn, means having developed the necessary technology, and having paid to put that technology into place.
More broadly, say peak-oil critics such as Mr. Lynch, whatever the truth about the past rate of discoveries of new fields, it's no sign of an impending geological limit. It largely reflects geopolitical constraints that have prevented the industry from fully exploring many oil-rich parts of the world, including Iraq and Russia. "It's a political change," Mr. Lynch says. "It's not geology that's causing that drop."
The industry continues to wring more oil from existing fields. Moreover, there are signs that some of the political constraints to new discoveries are falling in the face of rising oil prices. For more than two decades, OPEC generally has kept production well below its capacity to shore up prices, but recently it has opened its spigots wider. If prices remain high, oil-rich countries such as Russia and Venezuela will have more incentive to put aside their political problems and open up more fields.
Meanwhile, the industry is bullish that future improvements in its technology will enable it to extract enough fossil fuel to stay ahead of demand. "We've got plenty of oil to last us for decades," says Alan Kelly, Exxon Mobil's general manager for corporate planning. "Now certainly, there has to be an end. But we're of the view that that's quite a long way out there."
Dr. Campbell thinks the industry is fooling itself. He is so convinced that an oil-induced financial crash is coming that he has moved much of his savings into low-risk Norwegian bonds because he believes Norway has more oil left than other big producers. "It's no use having bland statements about the power of technology," says Dr. Campbell. "I just want to know where and when."
“石油生产下坡论”引发争议
八月的一天，柯林?坎贝尔(Colin Campbell)正坐在摆满书籍的书房里，忽然电话响起来。
“圣母啊”，放下话筒，他兴奋地大叫起来，“过去的好日子终于又来了！”
坎贝尔从电话里得知，原油价格正在大幅攀升──如果涨势延续下去，几天之后油价会就逼近每桶50美元的大关。油价大涨验证了今年73岁的地质学家坎贝尔博士的理论，这无疑让他非常兴奋。这也意味著，他15年来一直预计会出现的一刻──石油时代开始走向终结的一刻──或许终于近在眼前了。坎贝尔现在住在爱尔兰海边的一个小村庄里，退休前，他为石油行业工作。
坎贝尔是一个规模不大但突然间声名鹊起的小团体的核心人物，这个与通行理论持相反意见的团体鼓吹石油生产已达到顶点。从八十年代初以来，全世界开采的石油比这期间新勘探出的储量还要多，鉴于这一事实，他们向世人发出了警告。
他们说，最早在明年年初，人类将到达一个需要盘点和反思的时刻：到那时，人类开采的油量将达到全球所有储量的一半。坎贝尔博士说，一旦达到这个顶点，全球的石油开采将开始一路下滑，再也难以回头。
达到顶点将标志著廉价石油时代的终结。虽然在今后一个世纪左右的时间里人们可能还会继续使用石油，但油价将逐步上升。为维持经济增长，人们不得不大幅节能，并迅速转向太阳能、核能等替代能源。如果这种转换步伐太慢（在坎贝尔看来这很有可能），全球经济将痛苦地滑向停滞。
坎贝尔说，总体趋势下滑这一理念将改变我们所知的整个世界。被夫人亲切地称为“悲观的预言家”的坎贝尔说，直到现在，我们生活的世界一直都假设人类社会会在石油提供的动力作用之下无休止地增长。但是，如果说此前我们是在从山脚往山顶攀登，那么现在，我们将不得不面临从山顶开始走下坡的命运。
自从工业化初期以来，人们有关石油时代消亡的话题一直存在错误的预期，“石油生产高峰”理论迄今仍未能对美国和其他发达国家的能源政策产生明显的影响。
但是，由于一些强势力量正在改变著石油的地缘政治版图，有关石油生产是否已达到顶峰的争论又开始甚嚣尘上，而且其激烈程度远甚于以往。在这些强势力量中，最突出的是石油消费大国中国的崛起，以及中东地区和俄罗斯的政局动荡。
石油行业的人都称坎贝尔是疯子、怪人。他们说，自从他最早开始发表有关石油生产高峰时代日益临近的学说以来，他一次次推迟所预测的达到顶点的时间，从开始的1995年，推迟到现在预测的2005年。
行业人士指出，对最后日期的不确定显露了石油生产高峰理论存在的一个根本问题：它低估了人们找到更多石油的技术能力，而且“石油”这个概念本身是可以扩大的。
之所以出现有关石油生产高峰期问题的讨论，这本身也说明这样一个惊人的事实，那就是没有人真正知道地球上到底有多少石油，而且，也没有人知道人类能从地底下打出多少石油。有许多石油储量分布在社会政治充满动荡的地区，包括中东、俄罗斯和非洲。
有一个因素让人们思考的难度更大了：在人类很容易开采的传统型石油之外，地球上还蕴藏著大量的烃类，而一直到现在，人们仍不把它视为石油的同类物质。目前富含烃类物质的资源有加拿大的焦油砂和美国西部等地的油页岩。
自从人类在大约150年前开始钻探第一口油井开始，到目前，全世界共烧掉了大约9,000亿桶原油。据坎贝尔估计，地球上可开采的石油大约还有与此相等的数量，不过石油行业却认为坎贝尔太过悲观了。
比如，埃克森美孚公司(Exxon Mobil Corp.)就预计，包括焦油砂和其他非传统种类的石油在内，地球的石油储量大约还有14万亿桶。它认为，这些储量中大部分都能开采出来。
如果坎贝尔和他同事的观点正确的话，那么各国都应该加紧提高燃油效率，以尽可能地降低经济受到的影响。如果他们错了，而各国却按照他们的建议去做了，那么会有大量财富浪费在寻找替代能源上面，虽然使用这些替代能源对环境不无裨益，但它们的成本却有可能高于石油。
在对“石油生产高峰期”理论持强烈批评意见的人士中，以石油业分析师迈克尔?林奇(Michael Lynch)尤为突出。他说，地球的石油资源的确在减少，但还不到那么严重的程度，减少的速度很缓慢，无伤大局。他认为，到一定时候，人类将从石油转向其他能源。
但他说，全世界仍有大量的石油资源，足以保证在彻底枯竭之前实现平稳过渡。他说，在世界从马车时代过渡到汽车时代之前，马匹并没有统统消失，人类并未经历因没有马匹干活而缺粮断炊的黯淡时光。
近年来，经常有外人光顾巴利德霍伯──坎贝尔隐居的那个坐落在爱尔兰港口城市科克南部的只有300人左右的村庄，造访这位看似偏激的理论家。坎贝尔也把这些访客称为偏激人士。其中有一位来自路易斯安那州的美国妇女，她驾驶一辆用菜籽油作动力的带蓬货车，还有一对移居澳大利亚、以土地为生的英国夫妇。
但是，忽然间，坎贝尔引起了主流社会的注意。过去几个月来，坎贝尔曾在英国下院的一个联合委员会会议上发表演说，甚至还从巴利德霍伯通过电话会议系统向美国摩根大通(J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.)的200名投资者发表讲话。
这个月，从事卡车和发动机制造的沃尔沃公司(AB Volvo)的两位管理人士专程从瑞典到爱尔兰拜访坎贝尔。如果坎贝尔的理论是对的，那么，车辆制造商将不得不修改他们的设计。
这个月，极富声望的华盛顿能源咨询公司PFC Energy发表了一偏报告，对坎贝尔的悲观预期表示支持。不过，PFC预计的石油生产达到高峰期的时间比坎贝尔预期的晚一些，在2010-2015年之间。
但PFC负责编辑这份报告的高级主管迈克尔?罗杰斯(Michael Rodgers)也认为，作出石油生产高峰期即将来临这个结论比预测具体的年份更重要。
罗杰斯说，在PFC内部，人们对PFC是否要拿他们的声誉冒险、去支持一帮悲观预期以前曾被事实否定的家伙也存在争论，但最后他们认为，全球石油探明储量下降这个事实已经相当明显，石油业不应指望有什么技术上的突破能让他们及时摆脱危局。
罗杰斯说，坎贝尔之所以受到很多责难，是因为20年来他一直在宣扬他的理论，而他预言的局面并未发生。时间长了，人们觉得他就像“狼来了“故事里的男孩，不大可信了。我们相信，他现在的预测比以前更准确了，但不幸的是，他说的次数太多，人们现在不太敢相信他。
过去二十年时间里，全世界开采的石油量比这期间新发掘的储量要多，这一点人们并无争议。在此期间，石油消费量在快速上升，这意味著开采量与新增储量之间的缺口越来越大。位于巴黎的国际能源署(International Energy Agency)说，到2003年之前，全球石油消费量将从现在的每天8,200万桶升至每天1.2亿桶。
但林奇等批评人士则认为，有充分理由可以相信，人们将发现新的资源。他们认为，自六十年代以后新发现储量下降的情况并不是什么不可动摇的趋势，它是由经济因素人为造成的。供应短缺和由此引起的价格上涨将推动石油行业探索如何从地下开采出更多的石油。
林奇说，坎贝尔的分析受到了他的保守倾向和马尔萨斯理论的影响。林奇今年49岁，住在美国马萨诸塞州阿姆赫斯特。他平常就在卧室里办公。林奇的客户里有美国能源部(U.S. Department of Energy)和沙特阿拉伯国有石油公司Aramco。林奇已发表了数篇论文，对石油生产高峰期理论挑了些毛病。他最新的一篇论文指出，石油生产高峰期理论把错误的模式和错误的假设当作了结论性的研究成果。
坎贝尔对林奇非常不满，甚至拒绝了林奇邀请他当面讨论的请求。坎贝尔说，那就像请求一名医生对一个信奉信仰疗法的人宣讲药物的作用。他将林奇称为“相信错误学说的经济学家们的精神领袖”。
实际上，很早以前就有人提出有关世界石油资源将枯竭的警告了。1875年，也就是距埃德温?迪拉克(Edwin Drake)在宾夕法尼亚首次钻出据信是世界第一口商业油井16年之后，这位美国首屈一指的地理学家就警告说，地球上很快就会无油可出。值得庆幸的是，他错了。
- -当今的石油生产高峰理论家们实际上继承了休伯特(M. King Hubbert)的衣钵。1956年，休伯特提出了一个预测石油生产走势的钟形曲线。当时，美国还是世界头号产油国，而中东地区的石油开采正方兴未艾。休伯特博士认为，一国石油开采量的涨落和一口油井出油量的起伏规律很相像。首先到来的会是石油勘探高峰，几年后，随著工程师们工作的推进，石油开采也将达到高潮。一旦石油勘探开始下滑，石油开采随后也将走下坡，不过休伯特预计，这之间可能只有40年左右的间隔。美国大陆的石油勘探活动上世纪30年代前后已达到顶峰，按照休伯特的理论，到70年代，美国的石油生产将达到顶峰并随即开始下滑。
当50年代休伯特提出这种被称为“休伯特高峰”的图表模型时，很多人都嘲笑他。不过到了70年代初期，事实证明他的理论是对的。在全球石油开采量中，美国的产量已经不再是大头。中东、前苏联和南美国家的产量在迅速上升。
不久，石油输出国组织(OPEC,简称：欧佩克)中的阿拉伯成员国1973年突然收缩产量，整个世界顿时陷入一片恐慌。欧美国家到处可以看到加油站涨价和汽车排长龙等待加油的景象，短缺的情况时有发生。
一时间，国际社会突然对石油的未来倍感担忧。就在美国石油供应开始下降之际，怀疑论者警告说，全球即将开始出现石油枯竭的局面。已故美国能源部部长詹姆斯?施莱辛格(James Schlesinger) 在1979年卡特政府时期曾宣称，全球石油生产已接近顶峰。
但事实证明，施莱辛格也错了。石油业发明了三维超声成像等新技术，这样大大减少了钻探到枯井的几率。在新技术推动下，石油产量继续攀升。
坎贝尔当年也和许多人一样急于找到新油田。他进入石油业的时候正值50年代末石油生产开始风起云涌之际。此后的30多年时间正是石油业的上升期，他到处勘探发掘新油田，从哥伦比亚山区到挪威北海之滨，他的足迹遍布世界各地。
他从一个找油专家到一个石油时代怀疑论者的转变发生在1989年，也就是他退休的前一年。在他当时也是最后一位老板菲纳(Fina)的支持下，他接受了挪威政府的一个课题，研究全球剩余的石油储量。在研究中，他计算了世界各国的剩余储量，并把各国的数据汇总在一起得出了一个类似于休伯特曲线的结论。1991年，坎贝尔在一本书里发表了他的研究结论：全球石油生产将在1995年达到高峰。
在那以后，他曾多次更新计算数据。他说，到90年代中期，他和他的同事不再采用公开发表的数据，转而利用民间咨询机构的数据库，这些数据库里有各地油田的产量数据。他说，根据这些数据，他们得出了一个令人震惊的结论：石油生产商探明的储量远低于官方数字。
石油生产商们报告的“已探明储量”是指已经被发现的、并有充分理由预计可用已有技术开采出来的石油储量，市场普遍将此指标作为衡量石油公司补充储量能力大小的指标。
坎贝尔说，石油生产商应该做的是在他们开发某处油田的第一年，在已公布的储量上加上该处油田的全部可开采量。而生产商们的实际做法是在数年时间里，一点点地将可开采量加到已公布的储量上。
坎贝尔说，这种逐渐累加的计算方法让全世界误以为地球上有大量的石油。他认为，这掩饰了一个实际上并不美妙的事实，那就是大量的发现都是过去就已勘探到的。
PFC高级主管罗杰斯说，他相信，坎贝尔的批评意见仍具有现实意义。他说，在全球48个主要的石油生产国中，有33个国家的石油生产要么已达到“高原”状态，要么正在走下坡，其中还包括欧佩克11个成员国中的6个国家。罗杰斯还提到了另一组数据。他说，在过去十年时间里，大型石油公司用于勘探的预算占勘探和开采总预算的比例已从30%下降到了12%。他分析说，这是因为石油公司认为，能让他们勘探到并借以获利的大型含油带已经不多了。
罗杰斯说，虽然我们处在油价最高的时代，但是目前的石油勘探水平并没有提高。他说，造成这一现象的原因是，世界上有许多地区含油带的面积非常狭小，即使你能钻出一口油井并且获得可观的回报，但总的累积价值却非常微薄。
但石油行业的人士对这一分析持有异议。首先，坎贝尔对其可靠性持怀疑态度的以累积方式报告的新增储量却是美国证券和交易委员会(U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission)对公开上市的石油公司提出的要求。
行业人士指出，这种要求表明，美国政府认为，油田不应作为一项资产来申报，除非其拥有者有能力把石油开采出来。而有能力开采意味著要开发出必要的技术并且有资金实力将其付诸实践。
对坎贝尔的理论持批评意见的林奇等人表示，从更大范围来说，不论过去新油田的发现速度究竟怎样，它都不能说明人类在勘探石油储量方面无法寻求新的突破。它在很大程度上反映了地缘政治方面的约束力量，这些力量阻碍了石油业对富含石油的地区进行充分发掘，比如伊拉克和俄罗斯等国。林奇说，这是因为政治上的变化，新发现减少不是因为地理因素引起的。
石油行业目前仍在继续从已开采油田榨取更多的石油。而且，有迹象表明，面临日渐升高的油价，政治上抑制人们发掘新油田的约束势力也在缓和。二十多年来，为维持油价，欧佩克总是将原油产量定在远低于其生产能力的水平，但最近它的石油“阀门”也开始有所松动。如果油价居高不下，那么俄罗斯、委内瑞拉等盛产石油的国家将有更大的积极性将政治问题搁置一边，开发更多的油田。
与此同时，石油业坚信，未来在技术上的改善将使石油生产走在需求的前面。埃克森美孚公司(Exxon Mobil)企业规划部门总经理艾伦?凯利(Alan Kelly)说，我们有大量的石油储量，足够我们开采数十年。石油总有枯竭的一天，这一点现在已经很肯定，但是我们认为，那一天还非常之遥远。
坎贝尔则认为，石油业是在自欺欺人。他坚信，因石油问题引发的金融危机即将到来，有鉴于此，他已将自己的储蓄大量购买低风险的挪威债券，因为他相信，与其他产油大国相比，挪威的石油储量更多。坎贝尔说，仅仅泛泛地宣扬技术的威力是没有用处的，我只想知道新技术具体能在何时、何地发现新的资源。
