Energy Research & Social Science 31 (2017) 170–178

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Energy Research & Social Science

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/erss

Original research article

What if there had only been half the oil? Rewriting history to envision the MARK
consequences of peak oil
⁎
Daniel Pargmana, , Elina Erikssona, Mikael Höökb, Joshua Tanenbaumc, Marcel Pufalc,
Josefin Wangeld
a
School of Computer Science and Communication, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
b
Department of Earth Sciences, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Uppsala University, Sweden
c
Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
d
School of Architecture and the Built Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm Sweden

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: There is unequivocal evidence that we are facing the greatest energy transition since the dawn of the industrial
Peak oil age. We need to urgently shift from a global fossil fuel and CO2-emitting energy system to 1) decrease our CO2
Contrafactual history emissions and combat the effects of climate change and 2) face a future of depleting fossil fuel resources.
Allohistory Yet there is still a lack of collective action to start taking effective measures to meet these challenges. We
Thought experiment
argue that there is a need for narratives in general and for a special type of narrative in particular, allohistorical
scenarios, that act as thought experiments whose main function is to defamiliarize us with what is taken for
granted. Such scenarios invite us to explore plausible parallel paths, thereby making it possible to imagine
futures that are essentially different from the path-dependence of an unyielding historical past. Such futures
enable us to grapple with a present that is saturated by the inertia of past decisions and the sunken costs of
existing infrastructure.
We here present the design rationale for the Coalworld scenario: an alternative world where only half the oil
ever existed. We also describe the methodology and the assumptions that underlie the Coalworld scenario.

1. Introduction
The twin challenges of the 21st century are centered around the
inputs (i.e., energy and mineral resources) and the outputs (e.g., pollu-
tion, including CO2 and other greenhouse gases) of our global industrial
system. In terms of inputs, this paper focuses on fossil fuels in general
and on the use of and the dependence on oil (and gas) in particular.
While we do not specifically focus on outputs, we argue that all work on
energy should be performed against the backdrop of an increasing
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the concordant threat of
runaway climate change [1–5].
Less than a quarter into the 21st century it is already clear that
humanity will face momentous challenges in terms of providing suffi-
cient energy for maintaining current (or increasing) global standards of
living, while also trying to avoid severe environmental impacts. The all
too probable threat is that we will simultaneously have to face a scar-
city of energy resources and an abundance of climate change effects.
Entertaining that thought automatically implies that it would be pru-
dent to have a “plan B” for different eventualities when it comes to
these challenges. Fossil fuels currently account for over 80% of man-
kind's primary energy supply. The single most important source of en-
ergy on Earth is oil (currently with more than 31% of the share) [6] and
it has dominated and shaped the world since the mid-1960s when it
surpassed coal.
Rising oil production during the mid-20th century ushered in
modern society, and lead to numerous societal transformations for ex-
ample in terms of mobility (e.g., globalization), industry (e.g., plastics,
polymers, etc.), conflicts and wars, and so on. Several cautionary nar-
ratives of the overexploitation of vital natural resources have been
debated for hundreds of years: e.g., Malthus [7], Jevons [8], Hubbert
[9] and the Limits to Growth report [10,11]. Campbell and Laherrère
[12] more recently raised the issue of oil depletion by writing about
“the end of cheap oil” in Scientific American and recent work on sum-
marising more than 500 peer-reviewed studies on oil concluded that a
global peak in conventional oil by 2030 appears likely [13,14,80].
Since the challenges we face today are consequences of historical de-
cisions, might it be possible that we can also find ideas for prospective
solutions to current conundrums in the annals of history?

⁎
Corresponding author at: KTH/CSC/MID, Lindstedsvägen 7, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
E-mail address: pargman@kth.se (D. Pargman).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.06.007
Received 22 October 2016; Received in revised form 25 May 2017; Accepted 4 June 2017
Available online 25 July 2017
2214-6296/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D. Pargman et al.
The task we have set ourselves here is to imagine a parallel world,
an allohistorical scenario, where only half the oil ever existed. We have
chosen to call this alternative world “Coalworld” in contrast to the
world we live in, “Oilworld” (further developed below). The Coalworld
project is an attempt to envision what an alternative present would look
like in a world where the global peak in oil production (“peak oil”) is a
historical fact that happened decades ago.
The larger Coalworld project draws on literature, futures studies,
design fiction, social sciences, systems analysis, history and natural
resource research to, in a series of future articles, model (imagine, de-
sign, describe) a world that has lived with the consequences of a per-
manent oil/energy crisis for decades. The basic Coalworld parameters
are specified in a separate “baseline natural resource scenario” that an-
swers questions such as: what is to the best of our knowledge the shape
of the global oil production curve that describes present, past and future
oil production in our world? What would that curve look like in a world
where only half the oil ever existed? What would the history of that
world be as seen through the lens of petroleum geology, oil exploration
and development options? Which half of the oil that exists in our world
would be missing from that world and what would be the distribution of
that oil? The baseline natural resource scenario would develop a set of
reasonable ground parameters primarily based on geological, physical,
and mathematical models for natural resources.
The next step is to tease out the geopolitical implication of the new
distribution and volume of oil, e.g. to develop a “geopolitical reference
scenario.” With only half the oil present, the geographical distribution
of oil, affluence and power would bear similarities but also many sig-
nificant differences with the modern history of our world. The final and
most difficult step is to develop a scenario that depicts an alternative
present in terms of social, technological and economic factors, e.g. a “
social science reference scenario.”
While the results of the larger Coalworld project will be developed in
future papers, the goals of this paper are more modest. Here, we present
the rationale for the Coalworld project in relationship to narratives and
storytelling in energy research, e.g. what the larger Coalworld project
aims to accomplish, including its purpose, goals, theoretical under-
pinnings and methodology. We will also present the Coalworld scenario
itself and its design rationale, including challenges, design decisions,
open issues etc. Due to space limitations, we will not present implica-
tions of the Coalworld scenario, but we do end the paper by describing
future research, e.g. open issues and topics for future narrative ex-
plorations in the Coalworld project.
2. Historical lessons
Within a constructivist perspective, analogical reasoning is a key
feature of learning processes; each learning process includes a search
for similarities between what is new and what is already known [15].
Analogical reasoning has also proved to be useful as a tool for fore-
casting [16]. Historical analogies are well established as a method for
exploring factors conducive to – as well as vulnerabilities and risks
associated with − system-wide transformations [17].
For energy systems, many lessons can be learned from history [18].
Nef [19] and Sieferle [20] point out how the need for large amounts of
wood in early industrial processes in combination with prohibitive costs
for overland transportation led to a scarcity of accessible (e.g. afford-
able) wood and Debeir et al. [21], p. 90 describe how eighteenth cen-
tury glass-works “operated like a forest clearing enterprise.” When
Britain had to resort to coal after largely having run out of wood, the
resulting fuel crisis triggered a chain of events that two centuries later
culminated in the Industrial Revolution [19,22]. Similarly, increased
use of peat and coal was a vital element in the Dutch Golden Age
roughly spanning the entire 17th century [23]. Examples of other im-
portant energy transitions in history have been highlighted by Melosi
[24], Podobnik [25] and Rühl et al. [26].
Lessons from historical studies can be useful to understand energy
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Energy Research & Social Science 31 (2017) 170–178
system dynamics today, and they can hardly do worse than long-range
energy forecasts that solely build on extrapolations from historical
trends. Such forecasts have missed virtually every important shift
during the past decades, including all sudden, unexpected changes and
all slow deviations from established trends [27,28]. While technology
has been identified as an important but difficult-to-predict driver of
change [29], forecasts have systematically overestimated the potential of
new energy and conversion technologies and underestimated the inertia
in energy systems and energy infrastructure (e.g. power plants, once
built, characteristically operate for many decades). The history of large
technical systems is useful for enriching debates about energy infra-
structures by detailing many of their long-term implications [18,30,79].
Historical analogies have also been used to analyse and discuss so-
cietal responses to changes in energy supplies. Jensen [31] and Yergin
[32] highlighted the importance of energy in the two world wars and
Friedrich [33–35] drew on historical responses to energy shortages to
formulate a set of heuristic insights and causal hypotheses of how in-
dividual countries could be expected to react to shortfalls in energy.
However, Nalau and Handmer [36] conclude that complex issues that
lie outside of historical experience also exist. This leads to a delicate
question of central importance to this paper: can issues that lie outside of
historical experience be researched, and if so, how?
We are here interested in what happens after we reach a global peak
in conventional oil production. While historical precedents for the
peaking of oil supplies in individual countries [33] do exist, there are for
obvious reasons no historical analogies for the peaking of global oil
supplies. Using historical analogies as a starting point, this paper in-
stead builds on alternative but related methodologies. After briefly
discussing the role of storytelling, we describe the methodology of
thought experiments (from philosophy) and the use of allohistorical
narratives (e.g. the use of alternative or counterfactual history).
3. Imagining alternative worlds
While we do not know what the future has in store, we do know it is
exceedingly hard to imagine futures that go beyond extrapolating from
the present and the recent past. Cultural critic Fredric Jameson is
known for having stated that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world
than to imagine the end of capitalism” [37]. The lack of consensus on
imagining the future is not due to a lack of trying. Beyond popular
culture depictions in literature, movies, and computer games, several
academic fields have invested time and energy in trying to unveil the
future (or multiple futures). Most notable is the academic field of Fu-
tures Studies, with its roots stretching back to the mid-1960s [38,39].
If academic language excels at conveying precise facts, analyses and
conclusion, it might at the same time be particularly bad in situation
where great storytelling can excel, e.g. in helping to “convey messages
and translate between different sectors and types of audience” [40]. We
cannot on the other hand avoid using metaphors when we commu-
nicate [41] and Janda and Topouzi [42] similarly argue that re-
searchers inevitably communicate their results through stories whether
they know it or not. According to this perspective “Science is not neutral,
and policy is certainly not. Given that stories will be told” ([42], p. 518),
isn’t it better that we use them consciously and make them interesting,
coherent and compelling? Janda and Topouzi [42], p. 517) further
argue that stories can bee seen “as another form of rhetoric that, like
predictions and scenarios, shapes the understanding, expectations and en-
gagement of researchers, policy-makers and the public.”
We concur and we have shaped this article around a scenario that
might as well have started with the opening line of any fairy tale; “once
upon a time…”. Our particular tale is instead however shaped around a
“what if…” storyline. What if this rather than that would have happened
in geological time, 100 million year ago? What if the consequences then
would have been this rather than that 160 years ago?
But is this really science? And if so, what kind of a science?
D. Pargman et al.
4. Thought experiments
This work starts with a fictive premise: what would have happened
if there ever only was half the oil in the ground at the outset or the oil
age? From this premise, we seek to model and explore the history of an
alternate world and with the expectation that this exercise will provide
insights that are relevant here-and-now and in relation to the inevitable
arrival of the peak in global oil production sometime during the coming
few decades. While such an exercise could be intrinsically interesting,
the more relevant question is: can a fundamentally speculative research
program generate knowledge, provoke insights, and potentially guide
decision making about the future? To answer these questions we need
to discuss how speculative methods have been deployed in prior re-
search, and what kinds of knowledge claims such research can ad-
vance? Relatedly, what roles do narrative, storytelling, and fiction play
in constructing arguments and knowledge about the world?
Janda and Topouzi [42] argue that researchers always “communicate
with and through stories” and noted psychologist Jerome Bruner stated
that narratives (“stories, excuses, myths, reasons for doing and not doing”)
are the basis for how we perceive the world and how we communicate
those perceptions ([43], p. 4). Narratives are, from this perspective,
much more than a mere tool that is used to inform and entertain. They
are instead an “instrument of mind in the construction of reality” ([43], p.
6), an organizing principle and a mental data structure that we use to
collectively describe, define and constitute our reality. Simply put, the
stories we tell ourselves about the world (about what matters, what
doesn’t matter, what is true, what is false, etc.) play a significant role in
how we regard our world, and by extension, the decisions we make, the
policies we endorse and the actions we undertake.
The implication is that speculative approaches, such as the allo-
historical narrative we present here, don’t exist only in an isolated
“realm of fantasy” − they arise from our current understandings of the
world and they can serve as a critical lens on our assumptions about the
world. We can understand this kind of intellectual work as a form of
defamiliarization, “a literary device that compels the reader to examine their
automated perceptions of that which is so familiar that it seems natural and
so unquestionable” (Bell et al. [61], p. 151). Speculative methods such as
allohistorical narratives can foreground and illuminate hidden biases
while simultaneously proposing alternative modes of thinking.
The most extensively theorized speculative method is the thought
experiment in philosophy. Thought experiments have a long tradition in
both philosophy and the sciences, and they remain at the center of
contemporary philosophical debates. One common perspective on
thought experiments is that they are essentially cognitive “simulations”
that are run on mental models of the world [44]. This perspective at-
tempts to imbue them with the same epistemological power that sci-
entific simulations have; they contain starting conditions that are sub-
jected to an imagined simulation, resulting in an outcome or conclusion
that can form the basis for knowledge claims. This paper is part of a
larger project where we seek to combine computational and mathe-
matical models of geology, climate, and geography so as to develop a
speculative model that is grounded in scientifically defensible starting
conditions and that can generate actionable insights. These starting con-
ditions will be developed below, after we have presented the idea of,
and theory behind allohistorical narratives.
In a recent paper, Mariana Todorova [45] briefly describes one the
first examples of a rigorous and successful application of “counter-
factual analysis”, “Railroads and American Economic Growth” (1964)
by economic historian Robert Fogel [46]1:
“Fogel’s work contains a detailed analysis of non-provable facts and, in
this sense, establishes the realm of the non-factual. An alternative course
of history is constructed, in which no railroads were laid in the United
1
Robert Fogel shared the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences together
with fellow economic historian Douglass North.
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Energy Research & Social Science 31 (2017) 170–178
States, starting from the middle of the nineteenth century. This becomes a
turning point that divides all subsequent history into two branches: the
actual course that history took and the reconstructed, counterfactual one.
The two branches are then compared to assess the influence of the large-
scale introduction of railroads in that historical moment [45], p. 30).”
Todorova primarily uses the terms “counterfact,” “counterfactual,”
and “counterfactuality” to discusses a family of closely related concepts,
i.e., counterfactual, virtual and alternative history, or, allohistory.
5. Allohistorical narratives
One specific type of speculative thought experiment are allohisto-
rical narratives [47], also known as alternate, alternative, counter-
factual, virtual or uchronical history. What distinguishes allohistorical
narratives from other types of speculative thought experiments is its
temporal position. Rather than speculating about probable, plausible,
possible and preferable futures [48,39], allohistorical studies focus on
alternate pasts. Reflecting the way history has tended to be told, allo-
historical narratives have also tended to focus on the life or death of
“Great Men” (e.g., what if J.F. Kennedy had not been killed, or what if
Hitler had died at an early age) or the outcomes of war (e.g., what if the
Axis had won WWII) [49]. There are also examples of allohistorical
narratives of alternative courses for scientific developments (e.g., [50]),
of alternate past geographies [51], and of using allohistorical narratives
(i.e., ‘uchronian mapping’) as critical interventions in urban planning
[52]. Central to allohistorical narrative is the establishment of a diver-
gence, i.e., the point in time at which the allohistory starts to differ from
history as we know it [49]. However, as Turtledove2 notes, establishing
the divergence is only the first part of the larger task (Turtledove, 2001,
cit. [53]) and the second and larger part is to explore the ‘timespace
cone’ [51] spreading out from the divergence, i.e., exploring the ‘ripple
effects’ of the imagined what if-question. This process is essentially the
same for all speculative approaches, e.g. for fiction as well as for design,
alternate history and philosophical thought experiments.
“It is in that second half of the game that science fiction and alternate
history come together. Both seek to extrapolate logically a change in the
world as we know it. Most forms of science fiction posit a change in the
present or nearer future and imagine its effect on the more distant future.
Alternate history, on the other hand, imagines a change in the more
distant past and examines its consequences for the nearest past and the
present.”
(Turtledove, 2001, p. 7–8, cit. [53])
Todorova [45] discusses the “taint” that science fiction has left on
alternate history and of historians’ reluctance to use such methods:
“Alternative or virtual history has existed for some time but primarily as
a literary genre or a sub-genre of science fiction. For this reason, many
authoritative historians have long refused to take it into account. But an
increasing number of scholars are now making use of it in an academic
context.”
([45], p. 31)
Just as with futures studies, the legitimacy and the epistemological
relevance and validity of allohistorical studies has been questioned,
especially from more ‘straight’ disciplines of history (e.g., see
[46,51,53]). Kneales [59] however suggests that allohistorical narra-
tives are important for questioning teleological or determinist under-
standings of history (and of the future). In line with this, Gilbert and
2
Harry is a historian-turned-science fiction writer. In 1977 he defended his Ph.D. thesis
in Byzantine history, “The immediate successors of Justinian: a study of the Persian problem
and of continuity and change in internal secular affairs in the later Roman empire during the
reigns of Justin II and Tiberius II Constantine (A.D. 565–582).” He is however most well
known for being a prolific science fiction author who has published more than 100 novels
in, for the most part, the alternate history sub-genre.
D. Pargman et al.
Lambert [51] argue that allohistorical narratives rather than being
framed as ‘denying history’ can be regarded as providing an extension
of traditional methods. They also note that counterfactual reasoning is
essential to all sorts of causal explanation since “[a]ny claims that event
or factor x made a critical causal contribution to the outcome y, necessarily
imply an imagined situation where y did not occur because x was absent.”
([51], p. 248). Nor does Liedl [53] see a conflict between historical and
allohistorical narratives due to the fact that the epistemological func-
tion of both are essentially the same: to draw lessons from the past that
are relevant for the present and the future (see also [54,55]). This es-
sentially implies that the epistemological validity and relevance of al-
lohistorical narratives are essentially the same as for future-oriented
speculation.
Todorova [45] proposes an overarching structure for how to set up a
methodology of counterfactual analysis:
1. The counterfactual belongs to the family of the non-factual;
2. It describes an alternative course of history;
3. It compares the suggested alternative course of history to the actual one
(either explicitly or implicitly);
4. It specifies one historical event after which the actual and counterfactual
courses become separated; and
5. It requires an assessment of the plausibility of the applied analysis.
([45], p. 31)
On the craftwork of developing allohistorical narratives, Duncan
[49], Richardson [56] and Gilbert and Lambert [51] suggest a number
of dos and don’ts including 1) ‘the minimum rewrite rule’, i.e., do not
change more than necessary, 2) that the difference between the fic-
tional timeline and the real one must be clear, and 3) that the re-
lationship between causes and effects must be plausible (while the ac-
tual reason for the divergence might very well be a matter of ‘fantasy’ or
‘science-fiction’).
6. Why Coalworld? On the purpose of the Coalworld scenario
While humanity has known about oil for millennia and has har-
nessed its powers for limited purposes, the modern oil age started at a
particular time and in a particular place, namely 1859 in Titusville,
Pennsylvania (“The Birthplace of the Oil Industry”). The Coalworld sce-
nario asks the reader to entertain the contrafactual assertion [57] that
instead of the estimated 2.0–2.1 trillion barrels of oil that has ever
existed in our world [9,58], there only ever existed half of that oil in the
ground in Coalworld back in 1859 (e.g. 1.00–1.05 trillion barrels of oil,
where 1 barrel of oil is equivalent to 159 l).
In the world we live in, oil overtook coal as the dominant energy
source in the mid-1960s. This did not happen at all, or happened only
for a short period of time in our allohistorical scenario. Coal thus played
a comparatively more important role in that world than in this world,
and we have therefore chosen to call that world “Coalworld”. Our world
is for the same reasons called “Oilworld”.
The Coalworld project makes use of a counterfactual assertion to
initiate a process of defamiliarization [59,60]. The purpose of this
process is to disassociate ourselves from taken-for-granted assumptions
that are firmly incorporated into the worldview of all Oilworld citizens.
Through this process of defamiliarization [39,61], we can begin to
identify, unveil and foreground attitudes, values and assumption as well
as the invisible infrastructure [62] that both restricts and supports us in
our everyday lives. We want Oilworld citizens to glimpse the artifi-
cialness, the assemblages and the contingency of entanglements that we
take for granted in our everyday lives and instead imagine an alter-
native “equally possible” present. The idea that we take much for
granted and for the most part walk through life in a state that (in many
respects) resembles that of sleepwalkers is best illustrated by quoting
Austrian sociologist Alfred Schütz (1899–1959):
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Energy Research & Social Science 31 (2017) 170–178
“Man in his daily life is only partially […] interested in the clarity of his
knowledge, i.e., in full insight into the relations between the elements of
his world and the general principles ruling those relations. He is satisfied
that a well-functioning telephone service is available to him and, nor-
mally, does not ask how the apparatus functions in detail and what laws
of physics make this functioning possible. He buys merchandise in the
store, not knowing how it is produced, and pays with money, although he
has only a vague idea what money really is. […] That the subway will
run tomorrow as usual is for him almost of the same order of likelihood
as that the sun will rise [63].”
In much the same way, we assume that our cars will run and that all
airplanes will fly tomorrow as usual. While it is difficult to “separate
probable but unrealized alternatives from improbable ones” ([45], p. 31),
we still argue that it is easy to realise that the likelihood of “half the oil”
back in 1859 is not very unlikely compared to the sun (not) rising to-
morrow.
Once this counterfactual assumption has been accepted, we proceed
to constrain the circumstances of our counterfactual world by using
non-arbitrary measures that are grounded in sound geological model-
ling, i.e., while the one assumption of “half the oil” is arbitrary and
counterfactual, what precedes and what follows from that assumption is
not. The goal of this exercise is to propose and model an alternative
present in a post-peak oil world. Why would we want to model that?
This “plot device”, imagining an alternative present, allows us to pro-
pose and analyse life in an alternative post-peak oil world of 2017.
The purpose of this exercise is however not to exercise blue-sky
thinking “just for the sake of it.” The ulterior purpose of the Coalworld
project is instead to use the idea of Coalworld as a tool to think about
the post-peak oil future of our world, Oilworld. Our hope then is that
this exercise will constitute a warning as well as a catalyst to teach, to
discuss and to think about what life could be like for us in a post-peak
oil world of 2027, 2037 or 2047. Even should this implicit warning not
be heeded (as has happened many times before), we might still offer
insights that could be useful when peak oil eventually and inevitably
happens. As to the instrumental use of allohistorical narratives,
Todorova [45] stresses that:
“the interpretation and application of counterfactual analysis and its
potential as a forecasting methodology [is] particularly useful in helping
to cope with uncertainty and aid in the identification of wild cards, black
swans, and so on.”
([45], p. 32)
We emphasise that we do not regard peak oil as a black swan or a
wild card, but as a totally predictable white swan that is bound to
happen sooner or later − and perhaps sooner rather than later. We
hope that the Coalworld project can help us cope with uncertainty and
aid us in identifying black swans and wild cards that can follow in the
aftermath of peak oil.
We see our work primarily directed towards planning and policy-
making at regional, national and international levels as well as for
strategizing (for example at a personal or a corporate level).
7. Designing Coalworld
Development of the Coalworld scenario and its divergence (point of
departure) from Oilworld builds on a number of “design decisions.”
These were often made in parallel as the effects of one decision could at
times branch out and have consequences for several other decisions. We
have strived to keep to the three dos and don’ts of 1) not changing more
than necessary (‘the minimum rewrite rule’), 2) being transparent and
clear about ‘the divergence’ − the one important difference between
the fictional timeline (Coalworld) and the real one (Oilworld) and 3)
banishing all further non-rational/non-plausible relationships for be-
tween causes and effects (see further “Allohistorical narratives” above).
The one question that started the whole process − the “prime mover”
D. Pargman et al.
− was to ask “what if there ever only was half the oil on earth?”. All other
decisions, including the name “Coalworld” and the process of pin-
pointing and defining the where, when, why and how3 of ‘the diver-
gence’ and its effects, stem from this one question. The design decisions
are, for the sake of simplicity, here presented in a linear, logical fashion
as if we made the decisions in the order we present them below. The
presentation of the design decisions is structured by way of 1) pre-
senting a design decision, 2) presenting a justification for that design
decision and 3) presenting the results (or “consequences”) of that de-
sign decision. These three steps then lead to the next design decision.
Our first design decision was to not violate any laws of nature. A
concrete example is that we do not want to rewrite Darcy’s law [64]
which describes fluid flows (like groundwater, oil or gas) through a
porous medium (like reservoir rocks). Our justification is that the
consequences of changing that or any other laws of nature would be
unfathomable. This design decision is in line with and adheres to Gil-
bert and Lambert’s [51] “minimum rewrite rule,” i.e., that we have
made only minor and perhaps more importantly, plausible changes to the
world. The result of this decision is that fluid mechanics and the physics
of recovering oil from the porous rocks where it resides works the same
way in Coalworld as in Oilworld.
Our second design decision was to assume that only half the oil that
has ever existed in our world, Oilworld, ever existed in the parallel
world we have chosen to develop, Coalworld. The justification should
be obvious as the premise of the whole paper builds on this one con-
trafactual assumption. A consequence of this decision is that we needed
a plausible explanation for why there is only half the oil in Coalworld.
Our third design decision deals with the exact method of “re-
moving” half the oil from Coalworld. Petroleum formation is a process
that is generally well understood (e.g. [65,66]). Petroleum originates
from ancient marine sediment that was chemically transformed in
certain geologic zones of intense oil generation, commonly known as
the oil window, many million of years ago [67]. The petroleum gen-
erated through this process was later trapped in underground structures
by impermeable cap rocks that trapped the oil and blocked further
upward movement. This process further caused petroleum to accumu-
late in a sufficiently porous reservoir that later could be commercially
exploited as a producing oilfield. Since the formation of oil reservoirs
depends on several independent factors, there are also several alter-
native ways of practically removing half the oil. A slightly higher pre-
valence of earthquakes and faulting during critical petroleum formation
periods millions of years ago could, for example, have compromised the
integrity of some of the rock caps trapping oil in Coalworld.
This decision introduces minor local changes to the geology of key
oil-bearing regions in Coalworld that took effect many tens of millions
of years ago, e.g., a very long time before our proto-human ancestors
developed upright bipedal walking. In essence, Coalworld and Oilworld
share the same basic petroleum formation mechanisms, but Coalworld
simply had the “bad luck” of ending up with half as much oil as
Oilworld. It is our belief that this decision provides a plausible way of
getting rid of half the oil without any significant impact on geography,
occurrences of other natural resources, and human environment/
ecology.
Our fourth design decision concerned the consequences of “half the
oil” on the reserves of other fossil fuels. How would removal of “half the
oil” affect other occurrences of fossil fuels (e.g., natural gas, coal, shale
gas, tar sand, etc.)? Our decision has been to also reduce associated gas
reserves by 50%, but none of the other fossil fuel reserves. Associated
gas is a form of natural gas found together with deposits of petroleum
and it is either dissolved in the oil or exists as a free “gas cap” above the
oil in the reservoir. The justification is that this adheres to “the
minimum rewrite rule” [51] and it is also consistent with the chosen
3
These are part of the five Ws of any information-gathering or problem-solving task,
e.g. What, Who, Where, When, Why and the optional sixth How.
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Energy Research & Social Science 31 (2017) 170–178
method for removing “half of the oil” from Coalworld.
Non-associated gas found in dry natural gas fields or in coal beds
(i.e. coalbed methane) can be seen as independent from oil. The same is
also true for non-conventional oil and gas resources such as tar sands,
tight oil/gas, coal, and other types of hydrocarbons created by non-oil
formation processes. Hence, these non-oil resources (most notably coal)
would be complicated to remove without modifying additional geolo-
gical settings and events. Introducing additional changes does not
comply with the minimum rewrite rule and would make the Coalworld
scenario increasingly implausible. Another important “practical” justi-
fication for not removing half the coal is that we would have had to
rewrite history since the beginning of the industrial revolution instead
of “only” having to rewrite history since the beginning of the oil age.
A fifth design decision concerns which particular half of the oil to
remove from Coalworld. We have decided that the “first half” of all oil
discovered in Oilworld is present also in Coalworld and that the “second
half” of all oil discovered in Oilworld is absent in Coalworld. The oil
found in Coalworld is thus the “easy” oil; the oil first discovered in
Oilworld. This broadly corresponds to the low-hanging fruits, e.g., oil
that was primarily found in the U.S., in Russia and neighbouring re-
gions (e.g., Baku) and in the Middle East. This broadly covers all oil
deposits that were brought on stream until the point in time when
Coalworld and Oilworld oil production start to diverge.
After we found the “easy oil” in Oilworld, exploration branched out
and found additional “challenging oil.” This included different combi-
nations of hotter oil (further underground with high pressure/high
temperature conditions), deeper oil (offshore, deep and ultra-deepwater
production such as Mexican Gulf or subsalt deposits outside Brazil), or
colder oil (Alaska north slope, Siberia, North Sea, the Arctic). In con-
trast, petroleum exploration in Coalworld was fairly disappointing and
largely failed to locate any major volumes of oil for development after
all “easy oil” had been found.
The overarching idea behind this design decision is to make eco-
nomic/historical developments as similar in Oilworld and Coalworld as
possible up until the point of divergence. We once again justify this
decision by referring to Gilbert and Lambert’s [51] “minimum rewrite
rule” as well as to practical reasons. Removing “the second half” of all
Oilworld oil implies that we don’t need to rewrite history since the
beginning of the oil age (1859) but only since the point in time when
Coalworld failed to find and exploit the “second half” of the Oilworld
oil, i.e more than a century later.
This decision implies that many countries that have discovered oil
in Oilworld (“latecomers”) would never have found it in Coalworld. For
example, oil discoveries in Congo, Malaysia, and Sudan would be non-
existent or insignificant in Coalworld. Likewise, offshore developments
in Coalworld will be much more limited due to the absence of “second
half” discoveries, thus substantially lowering the 2010 Oilworld oil
production of almost 20 Mb/d [68]. A more detailed “baseline natural
resource scenario” that elaboates on the effects of this particular design
decision will be developed in the next Coalworld paper.
A sixth design decision deals with the connection between oil re-
sources and oil production. As this study on a fundamental level deals
with the consequences of relying on finite energy resources, a suitable
underlying framework had to be chosen. Hubbert [9] originally pos-
tulated an uncomplicated theory for exploitation of finite resources that
rested on a simple consideration:
(1) For any production curve of a finite resource of fixed amount,
two points on the curve are known, namely that at t = 0 and again at
t = infinity. The production rate will be zero when the reference time is
zero (i.e., before extraction has started) and the production rate will
again be zero when the resource is exhausted. Between these points,
production rate will be passing through one or several maxima.
The production trajectories can be completely arbitrary, as long as
they start and end at zero and as long as the ultimate cumulative pro-
duction is no larger than the quantity of ultimately recoverable oil that
is limited by design. This generates a consistent framework for a
D. Pargman et al.
resource-constrained Coalworld. Hubbert’s original work did not pos-
tulate any specific shape of the production curve, only that it was
subjected to limitations imposed by geology. Later on, Hubbert [69]
drew heavily on empirical data from U.S. oil production that was found
to follow the logistic curve − one of many bell-shaped curve models.
Subsequent analyses by Bardi [70,71], Brandt [72], Bardi and Lavacchi
[73] and Höök et al. [74] have later shown that there are many reasons
to expect a bell-shaped production curve of symmetric or skewed shape,
and that such patterns are well-established for various resources in
Oilworld. Hence, we conclude that they are theoretically sound to apply
also in Coalworld.
Conceptually, the quantitative effects of considering a much more
limited ultimately recoverable oil resource (URR) can be seen in Fig. 1.
A suitable production model can recreate identical historical produc-
tion up to the point of divergence and it will be in line with Gilbert and
Lambert’s [51] “minimum rewrite rule.”
7.1. Narrative timeline of Coalworld
The six design decisions together with their justifications and con-
sequences constitute the basic building blocks of the Coalworld sce-
nario. Another way to make Coalworld assert itself is to outline a
timeline that specifies the significant dates that the Coalworld scenario
hinges on:
• > 100 million years ago. The majority of the oil that ever existed in
modern times was formed during the Cretaceous period 150–80
million years ago. In the Coalworld scenario, only half of that oil
remained available for human consumption during modern times
due to a set of local geological events (earthquakes, faulting, etc.)
that prevented the formation of many commercially exploitable
accumulations of oil.
• 1859. The modern oil age started in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859
when Colonel Edwin L. Drake, on behalf of the Seneca Oil Company,
found oil and triggered the birth of U.S. oil industry (see Fig. 2). The
ultimate amount of globally available oil was of course unknown at
that point in time for in Oilworld and in Coalworld.
• 1900–1960s. Oil production is booming in the U.S. and petroleum
exploration/production is started outside of the U.S. both in
Oilworld and Coalworld. Rising production of oil goes hand in hand
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Energy Research & Social Science 31 (2017) 170–178
Fig. 1. Conceptual illustration of logistic curve
models for Oilworld and Coalworld constrained by
the same historical oil production data up to 1970
but different URR estimates. More detailed model-
ling will be presented in another Coalworld article.
with rising numbers of cars, oil-fired power plants, etc. and world
reliance on oil increases (especially after the second world war).
• 1900 and onwards. The trajectories of oil discoveries in Coalworld
and Oilworld start to differ (i.e. diverge) several decades before the
production of oil starts to diverge. The basic challenge of exploration
is to use incomplete information to maximize the probability that
the next exploratory effort will be successful. Exploration also gen-
erates progressively better information about the “true” distribution
of oil as a by-product. Discovery records are the agents' only source
of information, and since the effective Bayesian exploration strategy
yields early successes, the information becomes positively biased
and leads to overestimations of the total amount of oil via the
“fallacy of early success” [75]. Hence, we posit that the looming
peak in Coalworld oil production would have had no significant
effects before the 1970s in terms of Coalworld (geo-)politics, energy
prices and policies, technological developments etc. − just as the
fact that oil production is due to peak in Oilworld within a fore-
seeable future has as of yet had little visible effect in terms of Oil-
world (geo-)politics, energy prices and policies, technological de-
velopments etc.
• First half of the 1970s. The greater divergence between oil produc-
tion in Coalworld and in Oilworld happens at and especially after
the point of maximum production/consumption of oil in Coalworld
(“peak oil”). Due to poor exploration success in Coalworld, few new
oil resources can be brought on stream to offset the declining pro-
duction from maturing fields and the onset of a depletion-driven
decline of global oil production occurs in the 1970s. Preliminary
calculations of ours indicate that the divergence would become pro-
gressively more apparent during the first half of the 1970s, in-
cidentally, at about the same time the first oil crisis broke out in
Oilworld (October 1973–March 1974, during which the price of oil
rose globally from $3 to $12 per barrel). More exact calculations
will be performed in a follow-up paper.
• 1970–2020. There are numerous “significant dates” that occur after
the 1970s Coalworld peak in oil production. A few of the out-
standing issues are cursorily discussed below and will be more ex-
haustively discussed in follow-up papers.
D. Pargman et al.
8. Further narrative exploration
It should be evident at this point that there exists an abundance of
issues that could be further elaborated on within the Coalworld sce-
nario. While we cannot hope to explore every facet of society impacted,
we do intend to consider some of the major outcomes in our future
work. This article has focused on establishing the theoretical and
methodological assumptions, as well as describing the specific design
decisions that underlie the Coalworld scenario. We have thus aimed at
presenting a specific approach − an allohistorical narrative − to tell a
story that will communicate with, influence, and engage audiences, and
that can provide insights about narratives and storytelling in the con-
text of the energy and climate change fields.
Due to reasons of space, we cannot here expand on what Coalworld
in the year 2017 actually looks like, what happened in the preceding
decades (after the divergence between Coalworld and Oilworld), what
we hope Coalworld can accomplish as a thought experiment to envisage
a future post-peak oil world or to detail what the policy implications of
taking the Coalworld scenario seriously would be. For answers to these
questions, we instead have to point to future Coalworld papers, e.g. a
series of upcoming papers about the Coalworld “baseline natural re-
source scenario”, the “geopolitical reference scenario” and the “social
science reference scenario.” We instead close this article with a series of
questions and provocations about Coalworld that we hope to address in
subsequent articles. Some of these questions might seem obvious, but
we still take pains in spelling them out as we believe they are not ne-
cessarily all that obvious to all readers. We find it helpful to view this
kind of speculation as a system of interrelated dependencies − by
tugging away at one thread, we force patterns to unravel, resulting in a
multiplicity of critical perspectives that we invite readers to think
about.
8.1. Question #1: How does the decline of oil impact transport
infrastructures?
The majority of the oil in our world is used for transportation [6]. It
is then fitting that the first question we ask concerns the impact of the
Coalworld scenario on transportation technology. Oil’s singular virtue
as a fuel source is that it concentrates significant chemical energy into a
form that is relatively easy to transport, enabling a degree of mobility
unprecedented in human civilization. In the absence of oil, how would
the mobility of people and goods decline, and how would this impact
176
Energy Research & Social Science 31 (2017) 170–178
Fig. 2. A colorized photo from the early days of oil
production near Titusville, Pennsylvania, United
States.
human life [76]? How and in what way would trade and globalization
experience significant setbacks? How would this impact manu-
facturing? In the absence of oil, would air travel be highly restricted?
How would this impact not only commercial activities, but also cultural
dissemination (tourism, art, scientific conferences, etc.) and leisure
patterns? This leads to our next question:
8.2. Question #2: How does the decline of oil impact geopolitical power?
Would reduced transport infrastructure result in the rise of pro-
vincialism, nationalism, geopolitics and isolationism? How would mi-
gration and settlement patterns change if people flowed towards con-
centrations of resources rather than resources being distributed across
large human geographies? Would political power and cultural influence
realign to regions with access to deposits of coal and other hard-to-
transport (but strategically important) resources like iron and copper?
Would there be a parallel decline in the power of areas isolated from
mineral resources? How would the decreased availability of oil impact
the ability of nations to wage war?
8.3. Question #3: How does the decline of oil impact food production and
health?
How does the decline in oil production impact an agricultural
system that is reliant upon fuel-consuming heavy machinery, energy-
intensive petrochemical inputs (fertilizer and pesticides), refrigeration
and transportation services? How would food processing, distribution,
retail, diets (for example meat consumption) and cooking practices be
impacted? What would the impact be on public health, on population
growth and on settlement patterns including urbanisation and the
growth of megacities?
8.4. Question #4: How does the decline of oil impact industrial design and
technological innovation?
What happens to industrial design and manufacturing if plastics are
no longer cheap and abundant? How does the reduced transportability
and mobility of products effect mass production, manufacturing,
economies of scale, and distribution? How does technological innova-
tion − in particular computing and networking technology − respond
to a world of limited oil? What are the economics of production, con-
sumption, reuse, obsolescence, and waste in Coalworld?
D. Pargman et al.
8.5. Question #5: How does the decline of oil impact socio-cultural norms,
practices, beliefs, and narratives?
What are the dominant social narratives in Coalworld? Is it one of
temporarily obstructed growth, or of decline? How does the decline of
oil impact social structures like collectivism and individualism? How
does it impact political systems? Is democracy a viable or dominant
governance structure in a post-peak society? Do new narratives of
stewardship, conservation, and environmental responsibility emerge in
the wake of exhausting available oil resources?
8.6. Question #6: How does the decreased availability of fossil fuels impact
greenhouse gas emissions and climate change?
Would Coalworld benefit from decreased CO2 emissions due to de-
creased availability of oil, or suffer due to increased use of coal and
other “dirty” energy sources (e.g. tar sands etc.)? How would the de-
velopment of alternative non-fossil sources of (for example renewable
or nuclear) energy proceed within this altered technological context?
What other positive effects of decreased availability of oil could play
out, e.g. fewer plastics in the seas, less polluted air, decreased bio-
chemical (nitrogen, phosphorous) flows, less biodiversity loss and loss
of ecosystem services etc.?
8.7. Questing #7: What would Coalworld schoolchildren read in their
history books about the period after the 1970s divergence of the Coalworld
and Oilworld timelines?
Taking a hint from the first Oilworld oil crisis [77,78], how did the
Coalworld “permanent oil crisis” play out? What happened to the Soviet
Union, to the European Union, to post-colonialism and to neoliber-
alism? What happened to the space race? Which wars would have or
would not have been fought and over what issues would wars be
waged?
These are just a few of the questions that we can ask within the
Coalworld framework we have described in this paper. We believe that
simply asking these questions opens up interesting opportunities for
debate, reflection, and discussion about the consequences of a global
peak in oil production also in our world, Oilworld. This approach makes
use of allohistorical narratives and our known history as a reference
point for speculation about a world without oil.
9. Concluding discussion
This text presents an allohistorical narrative that describes a world
that never was − a world where there was only ever half the oil. The
emphasis has been on the theoretical and methodological contributions
of this approach in general and of the Coalworld scenario in particular,
including the design decisions that underlie the Coalworld scenario.
The aim of the paper is to describe a plausible scenario that never
did − but that could have happened. By placing the global peak in oil
production (“peak oil”) in the past and by teasing out and rewriting
recent history, we set the stage for exploring probable, plausible and
possible effects of peak oil in that world, Coalworld − and by extension
also exploring the effects of a coming peak in global oil production in
our world. This approach offers an alternative to falling back on more
conventional methods such as various forms of forecasting.
Allohistorical narratives also defamiliarize us from what is taken for
granted, thereby opening up alternative vistas of thinking.
The paper straddles and explores the tension that results from the
juxtapositioning of a simple idea (what if there had only been half the
oil?) with a complex idea (how can recent history be rewritten?).
Several important design decisions were made so as to push the di-
vergence between our world and the alternative world to a later
(second half of the 20th century) rather than an earlier date. While it
would be relatively easy to develop “baseline natural resource
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Energy Research & Social Science 31 (2017) 170–178
scenarios” for various “half the oil”-scenarios, it would be considerably
harder to develop a plausible “geopolitical reference scenario”
stretching back to the mid-19th century (e.g. would there have been
two world wars in the 20th century in such a world?). It would fur-
thermore be virtually impossible to both rewrite 150 years of history
and to also develop a plausible “social science reference scenario” that
would have any relevance whatsoever to contemporary social, tech-
nological and economic factors.
Simply put, the stories we tell ourselves about the world (about
what matters, what doesn’t matter, what is true, what is false) play a
significant role in how we regard our world, what decisions we make,
what policies we endorse and what actions we undertake. Speculative
methods such allohistorical narratives can foreground and illuminate
hidden biases while simultaneously proposing alternative modes of
thinking and new perspectives on action.
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