When Oil runs out??? Oil has been running out every since it was first discovered, but every year the reserves are bigger. BUt the big oil companies still get their phony"Oil depletion allowance." SOme serious thinkers don’t believe that oil is all millions of years old.
The reserves certainly are not growing. That’s insane. Yes, we’re discovering reserves we didn’t know about earlier, but only in more and more diffuse form, requiring extreme measures (fracking, etc.) to recover. There aren’t any more “gushers,” only ugly things like tar sands.
The “recent oil” idea has no scientific support. Only a few renegades hold this idea, and they have never shown any evidence to support it.
What you want to look at aren’t reserves but production rate. In this case, we are now using U.S. shale oil because crude oil production has peaked, and that took place even with vast reserves of crude oil.
Isn’t overall domestic use actually decreasing? We’re driving less, with better and more fuel-efficient automobiles. We’re saving energy in other ways, and we’re also making more and more use of alternative energy generation.
(Which, alas, still includes coal.)
The fact that production (and consumption) is on the decrease is (possibly) a good sign, not a bad one. The economy is still growing.
According to this source:
lower consumption might have to do with economic problems connected to unemployment, road conditions, etc.
As for the economy growing, I think it might have to do with increased credit.
Meanwhile, oil consumption for much of the world is rising:
even as consumption is dropping for several countries likely because of economic problems.