The art of soothsaying, although probably not the world's oldest profession, can certainly offer strong claims for being its second oldest. Non-scientific soothsaying is based largely on astute guesswork and ambiguous statement, whereas scientific soothsaying, or prediction, consists in trying to foretell as accurately as possible the future evolution of a material system in terms of a knowledge of its mechanism, its past history, and of the physical data on which its evolution depends.

According to the second law of thermodynamics, the evolution of any material system, when viewed in its entirety, must be unidirectional and irreversible; hence, incapable of repetition. However, the evolution of some systems can be resolved into cyclical and non-cyclical components--the swinging pendulum versus the falling weight of a clock, for example. If the mechanism is understood, the prediction of a cyclical phenomenon for limited periods of time can often be made with great precision.

The production of oil and gas, although slightly affected by a minor superposed seasonal cycle, is predominantly an example of a non-cyclical phenomenon. The number of oil or gas pools still to be discovered continuously diminishes; the mean depth and cost of wells continuously increase; and the production of power from uranium (and probably later from deuterium also) is well advanced on its inexorable ascendancy.

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Current industry data suggest that the total initial quantity of crude oil (whether producible or not) accumulated in reservoirs in the United States, excluding Alaska, was of the order of 350-500 billion barrels, and that the initial reserves of natural gas were about 800-1,200 trillion cubic feet. American Petroleum Institute data indicate that since 1925 production of crude oil in the United States has lagged discovery and development by the nearly constant amount of 10-11 years. Discovery is thus a preview of production by approximately this period. The peak of discovery and development of crude oil occurred about 1952-1953, which suggests that the peak of production should occur 10-11 years later. The peak of estimated proved reserves, which should occur about halfway between the peaks of discovery and production, actually was reached late in 1957.

Comparable data for natural gas suggest that the peak of production should not be reached before 1970, or shortly thereafter.

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