The Oil Drum is a web-based, interactive energy, peak oil and sustainability think tank and community devoted to the discussion of energy issues and their impact on society. The Oil Drum is facilitated by the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future, a Colorado non-profit corporation. The site is a resource for information on many energy and sustainability topics, including peak oil

Peak oil

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. This concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, projected reserves and the combined production rate of a field...

, and related concepts such as oil megaprojects

Oil megaprojects

-Megaprojects predicted for individual years:-New supply addition per country from oil megaprojects:Volumes shown are in thousand barrels per day. The summary table below is produced by a Perl script parsing each annual table...

, Hubbert Linearization

Hubbert Linearization

The Hubbert Linearization is a way to plot production data to estimate two important parameters of a Hubbert curve; the logistic growth rate and the quantity of the resource that will be ultimately recovered...

, and the Export Land Model

Export Land Model

The Export Land Model, or Export-Land Model, refers to work done by Dallas geologist Jeffrey Brown, building on the work of others, and discussed widely on The Oil Drum. It models the decline in oil exports that result when an exporting nation experiences both a peak in oil production and an...

. The Oil Drum has over 25 online contributors from all around the globe.

The Oil Drum was rated one of the top five sustainability

Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

 blogs of 2007 by Nielsen Netratings

Nielsen Online

Nielsen Online, a service of the Nielsen Company, provides measurement and analysis of online audiences, advertising, video, consumer-generated media, word of mouth, commerce and consumer behavior. Previously a majority investor in both companies, Nielsen purchased NetRatings and BuzzMetrics in the...

, and is read by a diverse collection of public figures, including Roscoe Bartlett

Roscoe Bartlett

Roscoe Gardner Bartlett, Ph.D. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party, and a member of the Tea Party Caucus...

, Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman

Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...

, James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is an American author, social critic, public speaker, and blogger. He is best known for his books The Geography of Nowhere , a history of American suburbia and urban development, and the more recent The Long Emergency , where he argues that declining oil production is likely...

, Richard Rainwater

Richard Rainwater

-Early life:The son of a wholesale grocer, he grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in mathematics, where he was a member of the Tau chapter of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. He was recognized by the national organization in 1996 as Kappa Sigma Man of...

, and Radiohead

Radiohead

Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...

. In 2008, the site received the M. King Hubbert

M. King Hubbert

Marion King Hubbert was a geoscientist who worked at the Shell research lab in Houston, Texas. He made several important contributions to geology, geophysics, and petroleum geology, most notably the Hubbert curve and Hubbert peak theory , with important political ramifications. He was often...

 Award for Excellence in Energy Education from the U.S. chapter of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, or ASPO, is a network of scientists, affiliated with a wide array of global institutions and universities, whose goal is to attempt to determine the date and impact of the peak and decline of the world’s production of oil and gas, due to resource...

 (ASPO).

The Oil Drum was started in March 2005 by Kyle Saunders (username "Prof. Goose"), a professor of political science

Political science

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

 at Colorado State University

Colorado State University

Colorado State University is a public research university located in Fort Collins, Colorado. The university is the state's land grant university, and the flagship university of the Colorado State University System.The enrollment is approximately 29,932 students, including resident and...

, and Dave Summers (username "Heading Out"), a professor of mining engineering

Mining engineering

Mining engineering is an engineering discipline that involves the practice, the theory, the science, the technology, and application of extracting and processing minerals from a naturally occurring environment. Mining engineering also includes processing minerals for additional value.Mineral...

 at Missouri University of Science and Technology

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Missouri University of Science and Technology is an institution of higher learning located in Rolla, Missouri, United States, and part of the University of Missouri System...

 (then known as University of Missouri-Rolla). The site first rose to prominence following its coverage of the impact of Hurricanes Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

 and Rita

Hurricane Rita

Hurricane Rita was the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the most intense tropical cyclone ever observed in the Gulf of Mexico. Rita caused $11.3 billion in damage on the U.S. Gulf Coast in September 2005...

 on oil and gas production. Since then, the staff has grown by dozens and the site has become well-known for rigorous, quantitative analysis of energy production and consumption. A notable example is former editor Stuart Staniford's analysis of the depletion of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...

's Ghawar oil field

Ghawar Field

Ghawar is an oil field in Saudi Arabia. It is located in Al-Ahssa, Saudi Arabia. Measuring , it is by far the largest conventional oil field in the world. The field is entirely owned and operated by Saudi Aramco, the nationalized Saudi oil company...

 (Depletion Levels in Ghawar).

The site started out on the Blogger

Blogger (service)

Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Up until May 1, 2010 Blogger allowed users to publish...

 platform, moved to Scoop

Scoop (software)

Scoop is a content management system originally developed by Rusty Foster. Scoop's focus is on collaborative publishing, and its feature set is geared toward encouraging user contributions and participation. Scoop is written in Perl and runs via mod_perl on Apache web servers with a MySQL database...

 in August 2005, and to Drupal

Drupal

Drupal is a free and open-source content management system and content management framework written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end system for at least 1.5% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and...

in December 2006.

External links

• The Oil Drum
• The Oil Drum: $100 a Barrel Quickens the Beat - Interview with The Oil Drum editor Nate Hagens, January 7, 2008.