Fig 1: Western Europe oil consumption, oil prices in $2014 Total oil consumption peaked 3 times at around 14 mb/d: (1) In 1973, the 1 st oil crisis which was triggered by the Yom Kippur war. The following OPEC embargo was successful because US oil production had peaked 3 years earlier so the US could not increase production to offset OPEC’s reduction (2) In 1979, the 2 nd oil crisis which was caused by Iranian oil production peaking in the mid seventies and the following Iranian revolution, resulting in a global recession in 1982 (3) In 2005, at the beginning of the 3 rd oil crisis when global crude oil production had a peak and declined until 2007 3 main oil consumers Germany, UK and France The oil crises in the 70s brought down consumption by 2 mb/d (oil prices increased 10-fold) through both energy conservation and a recession. […]