Hirsch: Oil Crisis Is Coming Soon, to a World Near You

Oil guru Robert Hirsch says peak oil production will arrive a lot sooner than most of the world would like.

“World oil production hit a plateau in mid 2004 and stayed in a narrow fluctuation range in spite the Great Recession,” Hirsch said during a recent presentation. “We believe that world production will likely stay on its current plateau and ... decline in 2 to 5 years.”

Hirsch’s personal preparedness measures include being completely out of bonds, almost out of stocks, adding some gold and annuities, moving closer to mass transit and shopping — and trading in his gasoline guzzler for a Prius.

World GDP and world oil-production growth rates have been tightly coupled for decades, Hirsch notes. However, he believes the correlation will work in reverse: Declining world oil production will drag down GDP.

“Our best-case mitigation does not overtake expected world oil-production decline for over a decade,” Hirsch says. “If the rate of world oil-production decline is higher that 4 percent, the challenges will be even worse; if lower, then less.” (more)