# The planet has run out of oil **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 15, 2001, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474 "2001-11-15T05:27:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Gaspode](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/aeb1de/32.png) [@Gaspode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaspode)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/1 "2001-11-15T05:27:20Z")
Someone has recently tried to believe the following: - the world’s known oil reserves would last 13 years if every human at a meat-centered diet. - the world’s known oil reserves would last 260 years if every human no longer ate meat. - 6.8 million barrels of oil are imported daily into the US. - 34.5% of fossil fuel energy is returned as food energy by the most efficient factory farming of meat. - 328% of fossil fuel energy is returned from the least efficient plant food. - 33% of the world’s raw materials are consumed by the US to produce its present meat-centered diet. Now they all seem like absolute BS to me, but you never know, we really might have no oil left by the years 2014. However I know their are some poster who have this sort of information ‘at their fingertips’ so to speak. Anyone care to debunk this. ---
**Author:** ![evilhanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba8739/32.png) [@evilhanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/evilhanz)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/2 "2001-11-15T05:50:32Z")
I’ve seen that as a chain-email in support of vegetarianism, “How to win an argument with a meat eater”. Here’s an [article](http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,5621,FF.html) from Fortune that ran in 1999. You may find it useful as a springboard for further research. About the remaining reserves: > [@](#): > > In 1939, and again in 1951, the Department of the Interior added up all the reserves in the world and reported, both times, that 13 years of oil remained. So much for those predictions. I think that’s why the 13 year number comes up so often. About the doomsdayers: > [@](#): > > Their argument goes like this: Oil is a finite resource. Nearly half the oil that exists has been used. This halfway point between what has been pumped and what is left to pump is critical. Once it is reached, perhaps as early as next year, production will peak and then decline sharply. As production falls, the gap between supply and demand will grow, pushing up prices and causing shortages. ‘When you accept that there is a limit to the amount of oil, you accept that there is a peak in production,’ says Colin J. Campbell, a consulting geologist whose views have been published in Scientific American and elsewhere. ‘One can imagine a colossal political crisis if the price goes to $40 or $60 a barrel.’ He worries that Western nations, fearful the Middle East had a stranglehold on the world’s economies, would resort to military intervention to secure their oil. > > Most experts do not believe Campbell’s prediction of apocalypse any day now. ‘This analysis is a piece of foolishness,’ says M.A. Adelman, emeritus professor of economics at MIT. ‘The world will never run out of oil, not in 10,000 years.’ Adelman and others believe Campbell has ignored oil reserves that companies have not yet found because they haven’t invested the capital to identify them. The Beverly Hillbillies notwithstanding, oil doesn’t just bubble out of the ground. **It is expensive to locate and develop, so people don’t look for it until they need it.** ‘In order to have reserves, you have to invest in them,’ says James L. Smith, who teaches oil and gas management at the Edwin L. Cox business school at Southern Methodist University. New technology enables oil to be found cheaply and efficiently and allows recovery of reserves which were previously thought to be unrecoverable: > [@](#): > > New tools like three-dimensional seismic analysis enable oil companies to bounce sound waves off oil-bearing deposits and translate the patterns into 3-D models. Drilling rigs using the technique find productive wells more than 70% of the time, vs. 40% with conventional seismic analysis. Robert Esser, director of global oil and gas resources for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, says, ‘More oil was found in 1999 than in any other year in this decade. There is plenty more oil in the Middle East and Brazil, and in the Caspian Sea region.’ In addition, producers are getting smarter at extracting oil from existing reserves. Major U.S. producers can now pump as much as 50% of the oil from a given pool, vs. a worldwide average of less than 35%. Esser sees worldwide production rising from 77 million barrels a day this year to 97 million barrels a day in 2010, without a peak in sight. ---
**Author:** ![Xploder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/a183cd/32.png) [@Xploder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xploder)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/3 "2001-11-15T05:51:58Z")
So then, what your numbers imply is that you’ve been listening to someone that believes **everything** that the militant vegetarians have ever said? I don’t get it… :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Xploder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/a183cd/32.png) [@Xploder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xploder)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/4 "2001-11-15T05:53:11Z")
And, yet again, I am scooped by a damn know-it-all. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/5 "2001-11-15T05:59:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Gaspode \* > **- 6.8 million barrels of oil are imported daily into the US.** It’s a bit worse than that. From my post [in here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=92856): > [@](#): > > In 2000 also, we took in an average of 5,822,000 barrels per day of domestic crude oil, and imported an average of 9,071,000 barrels per day of imported crude oil. This equates to a 60.9% dependence on foreign oil. It also equates to 228.3 billion gallons of crude oil used per year. ---
**Author:** ![Gaspode](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/aeb1de/32.png) [@Gaspode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaspode)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/6 "2001-11-15T06:36:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Xploder \* > \*\*So then, what your numbers imply is that you’ve been listening to someone that believes **everything** that the militant vegetarians have ever said? I don’t get it… > :rolleyes: \*\* [Come on over and talk to him, it’s fun.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=98994) ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/7 "2001-11-15T08:12:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Gaspode \* > \*\*Someone has recently tried to believe the following: > > - the world’s known oil reserves would last 13 years if every human at a meat-centered diet. > - the world’s known oil reserves would last 260 years if every human no longer ate meat. > - 6.8 million barrels of oil are imported daily into the US. > - 34.5% of fossil fuel energy is returned as food energy by the most efficient factory farming of meat. > - 328% of fossil fuel energy is returned from the least efficient plant food. > - 33% of the world’s raw materials are consumed by the US to produce its present meat-centered diet. > > \*\* What the hell? I don’t get what the hell these assertions are trying to say. Are we pumping cows full of oil or something? ---
**Author:** ![Genseric](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Genseric](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Genseric)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/8 "2001-11-15T08:35:07Z")
Really… > [@](#): > > - the world’s known oil reserves would last 13 years if every human at a meat-centered diet. > - the world’s known oil reserves would last 260 years if every human no longer ate meat. What’s the difference between an apple and an orange? A telephone pole, because a motorcycle doesn’t have any doors. How much propane does it take to grill a steak, anyway? Hell, I use charcoal personally. Of course I drive to the store to buy meat, so maybe that’s it. ---
**Author:** ![mmmiiikkkeee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/9 "2001-11-15T09:26:48Z")
The world hasn’t quite run out of oil yet… look up the Alberta tar sands projects currently underway. Bah, we don’t need the middle east at all :)! ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/10 "2001-11-15T11:25:13Z")
> [@](#): > > What’s the difference between an apple and an orange? > > A telephone pole, because a motorcycle doesn’t have any doors. G’huh? ---
**Author:** ![donotprodme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/43a26b/32.png) [@donotprodme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/donotprodme)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/11 "2001-11-15T12:49:02Z")
I dont Know if this is true but this is something that i have heard. At our current oil consumption rate we have only enough to last 10-20 years. Of course they have said this since 1900. ALso I have heard that there is enough oil recently discovered beneath the black sea to last our current consumption rate for 500 years. So I dont really worry about it. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/12 "2001-11-15T12:55:27Z")
Yes, I’m sure it is true. That’s why the price of a barrel of crude oil is now below $20/barrel. Give all those doomsayers out there a chance to stock up for a few years past 2014 at a bargain price. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/13 "2001-11-15T12:59:32Z")
So eating more broccoli will make our gas last longer? ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/14 "2001-11-15T13:15:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by mmmiiikkkeee \* > \*\*The world hasn’t quite run out of oil yet… look up the Alberta tar sands projects currently underway. Bah, we don’t need the middle east at all :)! \*\* From what I posted [in here:](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=47621) > [@](#): > > Well **bernse** , depending on which source you believe, Alberta has between 280 and 330 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves in the Athabasca tar sands NE of Edmonton. And a total reserves of about 820 billion to 1.1 trillion barrels. Pretty damn impressive. Some people claim that more than half of all the bitumen deposits on Earth are in the Athabasca deposit, but there is still much that is unknown about the true extent of that and other deposits, such as the Orinoco basin in Venezuela. There could be even more oil. > > Now, supposedly Syncrude’s production costs were $14.95 a barrel in 1994, $13.69 a barrel in 1996. So it is economical to produce. The problem is twofold - production capacity and efficiency. In 1996, they were producing about 206,000 barrels per day of oil. HOWEVER - the process is very energy intensive. Supposedly, for every barrel of oil they produce, they use the energy of about 0.75 to 0.8 barrels of oil. Thus, they have a really low energy efficiency in recovering the oil. And thus, that 330 billion barrels quickly becomes about 75 billion barrels - pretty good, but not what the news is reporting. > > Supposedly, you must mine about 1800-2300 kg of sands to produce 1 barrel of oil, and a large amount of the sands are under a huge overburden of rock, glacial tills, etc - sometimes hundreds of feet thick. Plus, the coking processes they use to refine the oil require a bit of energy as well. Thus, there are many different things that make the deposits interesting, but far from a cure-all. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/15 "2001-11-15T13:58:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lieu \* > \*\*So eating more broccoli will make our gas last longer? \*\* Maybe, but methane just isn’t the same. ---
**Author:** ![Xploder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/a183cd/32.png) [@Xploder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xploder)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/16 "2001-11-15T14:07:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Gaspode \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by Xploder \* > > \*\*So then, what your numbers imply is that you’ve been listening to someone that believes **everything** that the militant vegetarians have ever said? I don’t get it… > > :rolleyes: \*\* > > [Come on over and talk to him, it’s fun.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=98994) \*\* Oh. My. Ghod. Thanks **Gaspode**. Now I need to go wash my eyes out… ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/17 "2001-11-15T14:27:10Z")
We will never really “run out” of oil. As the supply diminishes, the price will simply increase, to the point where it exceeds the price of alternative fuels. ---
**Author:** ![Amp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Amp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amp)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/18 "2001-11-15T14:35:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lieu \* > \*\*So eating more broccoli will make our gas last longer? \*\* No, but it will make it more potent. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Great\_Gazoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/67e7ee/32.png) [@The\_Great\_Gazoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Great_Gazoo)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/19 "2001-11-15T14:39:49Z")
As soon as we run out of oil, synthetics will be created or utilized better. Look at Germany during WWII. Also, other sources of energy will be found. The world is less dependent on oil than is presented by the doomsayers. Of course, there will be a lot less cars on the road. A good thing, says this pedestrian. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2001, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474/20 "2001-11-15T14:46:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SenorBeef \* > What the hell? > > I don’t get what the hell these assertions are trying to say. > > Are we pumping cows full of oil or something? \*\* I believe the idea is that they’re looking at the total cost in fuel to process and transport corn and other cow food, then to process cows into meat and transport the meat to the markets, rather than just taking the corn (or whatever other food crops could be grown on those lands) and driving it to market. In other words, the fuel costs per acre of cows is much greater than the fuel cost per acre of corn, because the cows also need acres and acres of corn… [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-planet-has-run-out-of-oil/93474.md?page=2)