Jean H. Laherrère is a petroleum engineer and consultant, best known as the co-author of an influential 1998 Scientific American

Scientific American

Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...

 article entitled "The End of Cheap Oil". Laherrère worked for 37 years with Total S.A.

Total S.A.

Total S.A. is a French multinational oil company and one of the six "Supermajor" oil companies in the world.Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and production to power generation, transportation, refining, petroleum product marketing, and...

, a French petroleum company. His work on seismic refraction surveys contributed to the discovery of Africa's largest oil field.

Since retiring from Total, Laherrère has consulted worldwide on the future of exploration and production of oil

Mineral oil

A mineral oil is any of various colorless, odorless, light mixtures of alkanes in the C15 to C40 range from a non-vegetable source, particularly a distillate of petroleum....

 and natural gas

Natural gas

Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...

. He is an active member 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...

, and continues to contribute detailed analyses and projections of the future of world energy production.

Laherrère is an advisor for the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre

Oil Depletion Analysis Centre

The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre is an independent, UK-registered educational charity. The centre is working to raise international public awareness and promote better understanding of the world's oil depletion and peak oil problem....

.

See also

• Marion King Hubbert, and the Hubbert curve
  Hubbert curve
  The Hubbert curve is an approximation of the production rate of a resource over time. It is a symmetric logistic distribution curve, often confused with the "normal" gaussian function. It first appeared in "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels," geophysicist M...
  
  .
• Colin Campbell (geologist)
  Colin Campbell (geologist)
  Colin J. Campbell, PhD Oxford, is a retired British petroleum geologist who predicted that oil production would peak by 2007. The consequences of this are uncertain but drastic, due to the world's dependency on fossil fuels for the vast majority of its energy...