Abstract

This paper forecasts United States (US) oil and gas production to 2100 based on historical production data from the US EIA. The ultimately recoverable resource (URR) of each category of US oil and gas is estimated mainly using “Hubbert linearization” (HL). Then forecasts of production are generated by combining past production with either single or multi-cyclic Hubbert (‘logistic-derivative’) curves constrained by the corresponding URRs or with symmetric decline where HL is unclear. The results find the dates for the resource-limited maxima (“peaks”) of US production to be approximately as follows: Lower-48 states conventional oil: 1971; light-tight (“fracked”, LTO) oil: about now (i.e., about 2026); conventional oil plus LTO: also about 2026; NGLs: about 2027; marketed natural gas: about 2028 or a bit after; and tight gas: between about 2026 to 2028. The production peaks for US conventional oil and conventional gas reflect strong limits set by the recoverable resources of these fuels while, for the ‘tight’ variants of oil and gas, the peak dates are less certain. For US oil production, the forecast peak date is similar to both a detailed bottom-up forecast by Globalshift.co.uk and a forecast using Rystad Energy data. However, for US gas production, our forecast is more conservative than from Globalshift.co.uk. These results contrast sharply with more optimistic forecasts from the US EIA. The near-term resource-limited maxima we predict for US oil and gas will almost certainly have significant political and economic impacts and need to be incorporated into energy models and policy-making.

Published in Frontiers in Sustainable Resource Management, sect. Natural Resources, doi: 10.3389/fsrma.2026.1946271; see pdf.