The science-industry interface in the petroleum industry: Correlation of time series of indicators and their spectra, and growth modelling

Abstract

Petroleum production and exploration, used as petroleum industry indicators, and accumulation of petroleum-related geoscience literature, used as a science indicator, were compared by several means to gauge the degree of interaction between science and the industry in the period 1934–1990. Methods of comparison employed were: time domain correlations and crosscorrelation; correlations of spectra using coherence and crosspower spectra, and growth-modelling of the indicators. A fifty-year exploration cycle was found, beginning about 1945. Principal features of this cycle seem to coincide with prominent features in the time series for geoscience literature, and both of these variables are correlated with petroleum production. All three variables appear to have been determined ultimately by economic and political events which affected the petroleum industry. All of them show long-period cycles which coincide with the fourth Kondratiev cycle and the beginning of the fifth Kondratiev. The longest time series used (petroleum production in the United States, 1860–1990) shows long-period cycles matching the third, fourth and fifth Kondratiev cycles.