# What will REALLY happen when the world actually runs out of oil?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [December 21, 2006, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106 "2006-12-21T19:11:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Lizard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lizard)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2006, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/1 "2006-12-21T19:11:39Z")
Estimates of the world’s oil that is left vary widely, but the actual date when we run out is irrelevant to this thread. Let’s say hypothetically in 400 years there is so little oil left that its price is $2,000 a barrel (in today’s dollars), far too expensive to just burn it as fuel. This condition wouldn’t happen overnight; we would probably edge up on it for years.
But how will world society change as a result? Will the governments in the Middle East and elsewhere that depend heavily on oil to survive eventually collapse? If their economies have not diversified by then (here’s looking at you, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Nigeria) will their people starve? Can we assume that more developed nations like the U.S. and Western Europe have seen this situation coming and managed to find renewable sources for a majority of their energy by then? If they do/have not, will _their_ economies collapse, leading to another Great Depression?
What will the world’s economy ultimately look like when oil can no longer be burned as fuel? I think the Middle Eastern countries, if they’re smart, will have developed some sort of solar power. The U.S. has a lot of options; solar, wind farms, hydroelectric, even burning more coal.
I’m just curious about what sorts of changes might be considered inevitable, even if quite far out in the future.
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### Author:  [@Lizard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lizard)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2006, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/2 "2006-12-21T19:14:05Z")
ANother thought: How will the lack of petroleum-based fuels affect how we live day-to-day and how the U.S. military operates? Right now tanks and military jets use either gasoline or special aviation fuels derived from oil. How will they oerate when these things are gone?
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### Author:  [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2006, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/3 "2006-12-21T19:21:50Z")
You can make synthetic oil from other sources, including plants (such as corn) and coal. It’s not done now, because it’s not economic. But as the price of oil goes up, it becomes economic.
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### Author:  [@T\_SQUARE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/T_SQUARE)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2006, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/4 "2006-12-21T19:46:11Z")
Any resource rich country would be wise to diversify their economy and set up some kind of investment fund. Norway and UAE are pretty good examples. Saudi is coming around, and should get there long before the taps run out, assuming stability, which is admittedly a big assumption.
Giles already mentioned that it’s pretty easy to make fuel out of plants and coal. The U.S. has so much coal that we rarely bother to explore for new sources these days. You can also make fuel out of natural gas. Gas will be the “next big thing” as liquefied natural gas is used to transport stranded gas more often. Qatar, with massive gas reserves, is heavily invested in converting natural gas to diesel fuel.
In the long term, we will meet most transportation needs with electricity, generated by nuclear power I presume. I really don’t understand why the greens hate nuclear power. In my opinion, nuclear generation solved the problem of eventually running out of fossil fuels 50 years ago.
The book “The Bottomless Well” by Huber and Mills is a pretty good read. While I don’t agree with everything in the book, their premise that we will never run out of useable energy is on the mark. (Note: the book is not about oil, don’t let the cover art and title fuel you)
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### Author:  [@Lizard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lizard)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2006, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/5 "2006-12-21T19:54:24Z")
[QUOTE=T\_SQUARE]
The book “The Bottomless Well” by Huber and Mills is a pretty good read. While I don’t agree with everything in the book, their premise that we will never run out of useable energy is on the mark. (Note: the book is not about oil, don’t let the cover art and title fuel you)
[/QUOTE]
I would agree with them, as long as the Sun is still burning we have an energy source. What I was trying to get at in the OP is that human society and the world economy right now are based utterly upon fossil fuels. Globalization requires transport of massive amounts of freight by ships burning fossil fuels. Nuclear power will enable some substitution, for applications where smply electricity is needed.
But someday, waaaay in the future, there will just be no more coal, no more oil, and no more gas. I realy doubt converting plants into liquid fuel will ever be efficient enough to meet spiraling demand. Does that mean every vehicle you can buy in the year 3000 will be electric, or that we’ll will see globalization roll back because of the skyrocketing cost of transporting freight?
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2006, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/6 "2006-12-21T20:31:11Z")
[QUOTE=Lizard]
But someday, waaaay in the future, there will just be no more coal, no more oil, and no more gas.
[/QUOTE]
Well, that’s the point. Waaaay before we get to that stage, petroleum products will start climbing in price as they become harder and harder to find. Alternatives will become feasible. I can imagine large-scale cargo ships being fitted with reactors, as aircraft carriers and subs currently are, though it would be a brave (and desperate) shipping company to be the first over _that_ hurdle.
Sure, it’ll cost more than EZ-burning gas. The global economy will have to become more efficient to be able to pay the higher cost while maintaining the lifestyle to which it has become accustomed. That, too, is a gradual process driven by necessity.
_Scientific American_ periodically runs articles on this issue. A recent one had a plan for the energy infrastructure involving “reactor farms” built in isolated areas, transmitting power to city grids using superconducting (i.e. lossless) cables ([url=“[http://www.nystar.state.ny.us/pr/06/press26-06.htm](http://www.nystar.state.ny.us/pr/06/press26-06.htm)”]prototypes are already being tested[/url). Personally, I think wide-scale use of nuclear is the way to go, with the major hurdle being legal obstructions, not engineering problems.
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### Author:  [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2006, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/7 "2006-12-21T21:34:39Z")
Well on smaller scales ‘we’ have run out of oil at certain times in history, just look at Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, both had their oil supplies cut off. Germany manufactured oil from coal, I’m not sure what the Japanese did.
It has been pointed out that it is very unlikely we will wake up one day to find the wells have all run dry, it’s going to be a increasing cost of oil extraction, which will bring in alternate energy sources, so it will be a gradual shift from oil to other sources. At a certain point the value of oil will lie in it’s chemical properties, not it’s heat value I suspect.
Nuke (including fusion) and geothermal seem to be the longer term winners, and can be used to make a fuel.
The exception to the gradual shift, would be circumstances which would force a incredible burden on our ability to extract oil and make fuel, one such circumstance would be another global scale war. In this instance both sides need tremendous amounts of oil, environmental concerns go by the wayside, and pumps are run full out till destroyed by the enemy, irradiated, captured, or run dry. I know if you over pump a water well you can run dry long before you have depleted the aquifer, you just caused a local ‘cone of depression’ which will be filled in, it just takes time, I assume it’s the same for oil.
As oil become rare direct replacement synthetic fuels will have to do for military operations, which will reduce the effectiveness of the military. Civilian population will only get enough oil needed to keep up the war effort. There would be great hardship for the general population.
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### Author:  [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2006, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/8 "2006-12-21T22:04:50Z")
Of course, fuel isn’t the only thing crude oil is used for. Plastic account for about 8% of total oil usage (as raw material and processing), according to [this site](http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/InformationSheets/Plastics.htm). We’re going to have to find alternative sources of raw materials for plastics and fertilisers, too. Of course, there are alternatives, but I’m assuming we’re talking of a (hypothetical and very distant) future in which these have been exhausted as well.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2006, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/9 "2006-12-21T22:06:45Z")
Here’s a doom-and-gloom scenario from [_The City in Mind,_](http://www.amazon.com/City-Mind-Notes-Urban-Condition/dp/B0000C2W6A/sr=8-1/qid=1166738461/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-9788122-0265632?ie=UTF8&s=books) by James Howard Kunstler, chapter on Atlanta, pp. 73-75:
> [@](#):
>
> A current popular belief in America is that “alternative fuels” could replace gasoline in the vehicles we use and that the system could merrily roll along without petroleum as if nothing had happened. This a dangerous delusion. The truth is that no known “alternative technology,” including hydrogen, fuel cell, electricity, nuclear, or alcohol from biomass, can take the place of gasoline in the way we have organized our lives, especially where cars and trucks are concerned. None of the touted alternative fuels is as versatile as gasoline, or can be produced for anything close to the cheap price of gas we’ve been accustomed to, or can be stored or transported as easily. The electric car is not going to save Atlanta.
>
> * * *
>
> I believe the world is entering a long era of chronic instability in oil markets that no amount of wishing or pretending will hold back. By the time this book is publised – a year from now – I shall be surprised if we are not experiencing the initial effects. The two oil-producing regions that allowed America to postpone this reckoning for twenty-five years, the Alaskan North Slope fields, and the North Sea fields (belonging to Britain and Norway), are scheduled to pass their production peaks this year, and after that, most of the oil in the world will be controlled by people who don’t like us, or contained in regions to chaotic to engage in the complex business of oil extraction. The Middle East regions containing the greatest reserves will be the last to peak, but long before they do, the oil markets will destabilize. In the current American mood of narcotized inattention, the point can’t be emphasized enough that it is not necessary for oil reserves to run out before world oil markets are severely destabilized. And when that occurs, industrial economies will be painfully compromised.
>
> We Americans cherish a set of delusions to minimize or deflect the seriousness of this. As already touched on, we believe that we can run a drive-in civilization on some fuel other than petroleum. The actual prospects for this are dim, but we base our belief (a wish, really) on the spectacular cavalcade of technological achievements that occurred in the previous century, one astonishing novelty after another: airplanes, movies, radio, TV, antibiotics, Teflon, computers, automobiles themselves. (The lingering “victory disease” from our great triumph in World War Two still stokes our delusions of invincibility.) Alternative energy sources such as natural gas, biomass, coal, nuclear power, solar power, fuel cells, and so forth, will fall far short of compensating for disrupted oil markets. It will be a hard lesson. The world’s fleet of eleven thousand jet airplanes will not run on coal or plutonium. Massive disruptions to transportation and business will occur. The “global economy” as touted in recent years – meaning the long-range transport of enormous quantities of cheap goods virtually everywhere – will join mercantile imperialism in the history books. Food production, which depends heavily on oil-based fertilizers, will be affected by oil market disturbances. The Caesar salad that travels twenty-five hundred miles from California to somebody’s table in Atlanta will become an object of nostalgia. Farming will have to become much more labor-intensive, will have to be practiced on a far smaller scale, and done much closer to market. Half a million other products, from medicine, asphalt, paint and detergent to plastic trash bags, are also derived from oil. As the oil markets destabilize, shortages and fluctuating prices in oil will hinder industry from even addressing the problem of converting societies to other forms of energy.
See also Kunstler’s [_The Long Emergency,_](http://www.amazon.com/Long-Emergency-Converging-Catastrophes-Twenty-First/dp/0802142494/sr=1-1/qid=1166738750/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-9788122-0265632?ie=UTF8&s=books) and Kunstler’s [website.](http://www.kunstler.com)
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### Author:  [@jharvey963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jharvey963)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2006, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/10 "2006-12-21T23:01:03Z")
I think the likelyhood of global war, fought over access to oil, will happen long before we get anywhere close to running out.
I’m not very confident that governments will be sufficiently forward thinking to convert us to non-oil energy in time. Look at how our (US) government is responding to global warming. This is a serious problem that they’re just ignoring and denying. I think they will do the same thing with oil – they’ll ignore converting to non-oil energy until it is too late. (Partially due to the influence of the huge oil companies, who won’t want to lose their cash cow.)
I don’t think the catalyst for this war will be “running out of oil”. I think as soon as the PERCEPTION that we have passed “peak oil” becomes widespread, that governments will begin to panic. “The world is running out of oil. We need to secure our access to sufficient quantities for our industries and consumers. You’ve got oil. We’re going to take it.”
One minor country seizing the oil fields of an oil-rich neighbor could start it. Larger countries would be required to intervene, and the US, Russia, China, and India would likely not be all on the same side. Thus, we’d have the largest countries fighting each other.
The question in my mind is, how much time do we have until “peak oil”? (Or have we already passed it?) And that is part of the problem. We won’t know it’s approaching until we’ve already passed it, or until it’s so close we won’t have sufficient time to convert.
And to end this message on an even grimmer note 🙂 I don’t think the original question is valid. It’s not “will the oil-producing countries survive”, it’s “will humanity survive”?
(I’m usually NOT this pessimistic. Really…) 🙂
I sincerely hope that I am absolutely and completely wrong about this.
J.
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### Author:  [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2006, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/11 "2006-12-22T02:34:40Z")
I think the 400 years period on the OP is so long that the changes that will occur by then by virtue of progress in all fields will be much more than what could come as a consequence of oil depletion.
And I don’t think it will take 400 years for oil to run out, either.
I think a 50 year scenario would make for a more interesting discussion.
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2006, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/12 "2006-12-22T02:38:11Z")
I don’t think the oil will EVER run out. It will simply price itself out of the top spot as a fuel source for personal transport and energy generation. Other technologies will eventually become cost effective as the price of oil rises. When will this happen? I think we are getting fairly close to the break even point now. I figure when we see the price of gas at the pump (in the US) around $10/gal a lot of alternatives will start to kick in. Say…2 decades tops.
-XT
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### Author:  [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2006, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/13 "2006-12-22T03:05:10Z")
[QUOTE=Sapo]
I think the 400 years period on the OP is so long that the changes that will occur by then by virtue of progress in all fields will be much more than what could come as a consequence of oil depletion.
And I don’t think it will take 400 years for oil to run out, either.
I think a 50 year scenario would make for a more interesting discussion.
[/QUOTE]
There is way more oil still left in the world than the popular press will have people believe. The doom and gloom numbers thrown out usually just reflect the easy to refine crude oil coming out of the Middle East and a few other scattered hot spots around the world but that is far from the only kind.
For4 instance, [Canada’s Tar Sands (Alberta)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands) are just now being frantically opened up with frenetic construction as the price other conventional oil eased up past the break even point to extract and refine this messier form of petroleum. This isn’t some second-rate alternative either. Reasonable estimates say that Canada’s Tar Sands alone contain 1.7 trillion barrels of oil which, amazingly, might meet or exceed oil all the conventional oil in the Middle East and the Gulf of Mexico combined. If that isn’t enough, Venezuela has that much in their tar sands as well.
Contrast that with another big oil discovery earlier this year in [the Gulf of Mexico.](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14678206/) that contains about 15 billion barrels of oil. That discovery really is big but it is dwarfed by the 3 trillion barrels held in the known tar sands.
Even with just those sources, it is unlikely we can use them all in 50 years. Assuming that we did use all reasonable sources of oil in the world and it became economically unfeasible to use, we can still tap our ace in the hole, our coal reserves. Our known coal reserves in the U.S. are currently plotted to last about 300 more years but that assumes that we keep the same mining and extraction techniques in place today. Coal can be used to make almost anything crude oil can including gasoline but it isn’t economical for that purpose today and it is messy.
This is both reassuring and comforting. The good news is that it would be virtually impossible to actually run out of sufficient petroleum sources in our lifetime because there are too many alternative sources that are already known. The bad news that something like the Alberta Tar Sands or using coal to make gasoline would cause price stability for petroleum products and encourage us to keep using the same fuels that we have been.
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### Author:  [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2006, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/14 "2006-12-22T03:59:01Z")
true, I think I will subscribe to xtisme’s line. We will run out of interest in oil before we run out of oil. Oil will be the fuel of choice for airplanes and not much else as the rising prices of oil make alternatives cost-efficient.
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### Author:  [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2006, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/15 "2006-12-22T04:33:52Z")
[QUOTE=James Howard Kunstler]
The truth is that no known “alternative technology,” including hydrogen, fuel cell, electricity, nuclear, or alcohol from biomass, can take the place of gasoline in the way we have organized our lives, especially where cars and trucks are concerned.
[/QUOTE]
This is quite simply nonsense (unless we are talking about the fantasy scenario of “everybody wakes up one morning and there ain’t no oil no more” rather than the realistic “a long-term trend toward increasing oil prices generates pressure toward conservation and alternatives over the next few decades”).
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### Author:  [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2006, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/16 "2006-12-22T05:01:15Z")
> [@](#):
>
> WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently **achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent** , establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.
Source: [US Dept. of Energy - 05 December 2006](http://www.energy.gov/news/4503.htm)
> [@](#):
>
> A page linked from Wikipedia’s [article on solar energy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy) calculates the [land area](http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/) that would need to be covered by solar collectors at **8% efficiency** to meet the world’s energy needs (using 2003 figures). At **40% efficiency** , it looks like a square 265 miles on a side in the American southwest would do it.
Source: [http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/06/027228](http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/06/027228)
If these figures are accurate, and this project were brought forward, **265 square miles of these solar cells would meet the total energy requirements for the entire planet**. Of course, it would make sense to spread that minimum 265 square miles all around the globe for reasons that should be obvious.
My 5,000th post!
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### Author:  [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2006, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/17 "2006-12-22T13:26:00Z")
[QUOTE=James Howard Kunstler]
The truth is that no known “alternative technology,” including hydrogen, fuel cell, electricity, nuclear, or alcohol from biomass, can take the place of gasoline in the way we have organized our lives, especially where cars and trucks are concerned.
[/QUOTE]
Oil is both a fuel and energy source, so it is far and ahead, but given a energy source, we can store that in a fuel, which will be suitable for vehicular use. Our best long term energy source is nuke, and can over time build up excess capacity to manufacture fuels.
Also what hasn’t been mentioned is natural gas, which we are expected to have far more of then oil, to the point that some suspect that CNG tankers will be constructed to transport that stuff oversees. Modern vehicle’s can run on NG with some modifications, but nothing that would require vehicle replacement.
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### Author:  [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2006, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/18 "2006-12-22T14:00:05Z")
[QUOTE=Duckster]
If these figures are accurate, and this project were brought forward, **265 square miles of these solar cells would meet the total energy requirements for the entire planet**. Of course, it would make sense to spread that minimum 265 square miles all around the globe for reasons that should be obvious.
[/QUOTE]
Very roughly and without much consideration to the rest of the infrastructure needed, what would be the cost of 265 square miles of solar cells? How many Belgiums is that (in surface)?
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2006, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/19 "2006-12-22T15:08:25Z")
[QUOTE=Sapo]
Very roughly and without much consideration to the rest of the infrastructure needed, what would be the cost of 265 square miles of solar cells? How many Belgiums is that (in surface)?
[/QUOTE]
I doubt anyone could give you even a rough estimate on the cost right now as the process is experimental…give it a few years to have all the kinks worked out and be in production before estimating something like that. It still needs to be proved our for that matter…those figures seem pretty high to me for a full scale system.
As for how many Belgiums it would take…don’t build the things in Western Europe. Try on the plains in Russia. 🙂 The US could hide 250 square miles of solar cells easily in several of our western states. Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona spring to mind…but really any of the states in the South West would do.
-XT
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2006, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-really-happen-when-the-world-actually-runs-out-of-oil/385106/20 "2006-12-22T17:56:42Z")
17 miles by 17 miles?
40 percent conversion?
The Roads Must Roll!
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