I heard it will run out in 10 - 15 years. Is this true? If it is, what will we use for power?
10-15 years is not true. There’s still plenty of oil to be exploited. The Caspian Sea has hardly been tapped and it probably has more reserves than the North Sea. The oil sands in Northern Alberta have more oil than Saudi Arabia. There are still plenty of geological basins to be developed. The consumption figures are staggering, mostly fuel for motor vehicles. As the more difficult and remote sources for oil become developed the price will continue to rise. This will lead to alternative energy sources. IMHO, ten years from now all new cars will be electric/fuel hybrids. I’m looking forward to the day when motor vehicles are no longer associated with “sport” and “muscle” and “performance”. I was just reading a couple of stories in the newspaper this morning about two children run down and dragged under motor vehicles in my city. Have a nice summer!
I have heard of more like 100-200yrs.
also i have heard that oil might be much more abundant then once thought. The theory that I am talking about is that oil is not from biological sources but a natural product of, well formation of the solar system. Meteroites contain ‘organic tars’ which are simular to oil.
I think the real question is when a compeating energy technolgy will become cheaper then oil
k2, I think you’re thinking of Thomas Gold’s idea that there may be an abundance of abiogenic methane below the earth’s crust. Nice idea, no confirmation (or even very good indication), so nobody’s banking on it yet.
The recent price adjustments are not an anomaly - more people are using more of the stuff and the supply situation is catching up. I think anybody who’s got 20 years left in them is going to see a big change in the relationship between people and oil.
With about 800 billion barrels of reserves identified, and guesstimates that there might still be another 100-200 billion barrels yet to be found, you can do the math to figure out when we might run dry. The Energy Information Administration’s website is a good source for consumption figures. I’d look it up, but I really don’t have time right now - I’m at work hunting for new hydrocarbon reserves.
Any projections one makes regarding the future of humanity’s relationship with hydrocarbons must take into account the complexities that will accompany change (I hate that sentence, but I really gotta go).
The key is when will production begin to decline. A pretty well written article in Scientific American calls for a peak in production during 2008 to 2010. The article is from March 1998 but still relevant. Link is: http://www.oilcrisis.com/sciam983.htm
When production peaks and begins to decline, price/demand should generate significant efforts into alternative energy sources.
It won’t run out for a long time … but it will soon become more difficult to get. Oil is trapped inside of rocks. Some rocks give up the oil easily. Others do not. Think of gold mining: at first, people only picked up the big nuggets lying on the ground; then they dug deep holes to go after wide veins; then they panned for it in rivers; then they started dissolving tons of rock at a time to leach out the trace amounts of gold. Geologists know of many types of oil-bearing rocks that, at this time, are too difficult to extract oil from and therefore are not profitable to bother with. Easy oil still exists.
What happens when that runs out? I think the others are right–we’ll start to move to other sources of fuel (cars, that is … I imagine heating oil, diesel for generating plants, etc., will still be in use for a while). I have some friends in biotech working on bacteria- and plant-produced plastics–they think that such plastics will be comparable in price to current petrochem plastics within the next decade or two. So that transition should happen about the same time, too.
Oil will never run out.
As existing reserves tighten, the price will rise. This will cause new exploration and bring into play currently unprofitable reserves. However it will also make research into other energy sources more attractive.
The less oil there is, the higher its price will go until alternatives become viable. Then oil only be used for a few exotic lubricating purposes (ooh err).
Note that this doesn’t require any great planning: increases in price make it happen by itself. If governments would lay off underpricing energy it would happen faster.
picmr
Of crude oil and gasoline? The Germans did this during WWII (the Lurgi process), they made acceptable gasoline from hydrogen and coal. The process they used utilized extremely high pressure (10,000 PSI) and was expensive. nevertheless, it kept Hitler’s war machine going after he lost his supply in Romania.
Synthetic gasoline could be made by us, as we have a 1000+ -year supply of coal, and you can make all the hydrogen you want from water.
I really don’t see a problem-as the price of natural petroleum rises, we will just drive smaller and more efficient cars. We can certainly make cars that get 50+ MPG-this would eliminate most of our oil imports.
I read that Scientific American article as well, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot as gas prices have risen over the past year and a half.
The SciAm article explained that it has become much cheaper to turn natural gas (which is essentially gaseous petroleum) into gasoline. Formerly prohibitively expensive, now it can be done for about $20 a barrel. And there’s much more natural gas than liquid petroleum in the world; something like billions of cubic feet, and the U.S. has access to plenty of it.
So (the article claimed), if the price of oil ever permanently goes above $20/barrel, we can just switch to natural gas-gasoline instead.
The article was published when oil was around $15/barrel. It’s nearly twice that now, and has been for some time. So, why haven’t we heard about natural gas refineries cranking into production?
In Australia virtually all (>95%) taxis run on LPG (liquid petrolium gas) and have done for about fifteen years. Many private cars have also converted. Is this what you mean?
picmr
Looked at gas prices lately? Mobil and Exxon are rakin’ it in. Natural gas would cut into that profit. Secondly they’d also have to invest time and money to back research and development which, obviously, they’re not too keen to do since they’ve got a tidy little corner all to themselves.
Was Thomas Gold the scientist who asserted that oil and petroleum products were ‘sweated’ out from beneath the crust? I remember reading a fairly lengthy article in the Washington Post about him and his theories - as I recall, they had one incident where they drilled a deposit in Scandinavia that had been declared completely dry and got a couple dozen or so barrels out of it.
Let’s not forget the heavy bitumen deposits of Venezuela, from which fuels such as Orimulsion ™ are produced. There are est. 270 billion barrels of economically recoverable reserves there alone (according to Bitor PdV S.A.), with total reserves at 1.2 trillion barrels. True, use of Orimulsion as a motor fuel directly has been relatively unsuccessful, and only Warsilia is actively working on it. But it can be cracked into lighter products (for mucho $$$).
As I’ve posted in several other threads - I think we are unlikely to run out of hydrocarbon resources anytime soon. The real issue IMO is can we afford to keep burning them from an environmental standpoint.
A few years back I was involved in a research project at Raytheon-we were looking at using microwave radiation to release crude oil from oil shales. I did speak to a man who had overall control of the project, he told me that in Colorado alone (the Green River basin) there was estimated to be 100 times the oil deposits of saudi arabia!!
Unfortunately, this projectt was cancelled due to the low price of middle eastern crude oil!
Another reason is the shift in the US to adding gas turbines for extra electric generating capacity, and the complete lack of new coal plants. Natural gas consumption for power generation is enormous relative to the 70’s and early 80’s, all because no one wants those evil coal plants to be built. (and the higher capital cost, siting issues, and longer construction schedule too). If consuption continues and all new generation in the US continues to be natural gas, I do think we will be headed for a pinch soon.
And in addition, there is the potential energy source of methane hydrate deposits on the ocean floor. So when we run out of petroleum is largely a matter of how good the technology for finding and recovering it becomes. And when old-fashiond black crude production does peak, there will still be alternatives, though probably more expensive. It isn’t like the tap is simply going to run dry one day.
picmr is right, to a point. I believe it is more accurate to say that no one knows, and no one can know.
One of the greatest fallacies that occurs in discussion of how long oil reserves will last is that predictions of the size of oil reserves (the stuff still in the ground)are dependent on the cost of extracting oil.
When people say that the U.K. will run out of North Sea oil in 10 years, what they are saying is that the U.K. will run out of economically extractable oil in 10 years. If oil went for $100 bucks a barrel, the number changes dramatically. All those oil wells that were capped in Texas as prices plummeted in the mid-90’s still have oil in them - it’s just not worth getting it out.
Similarly, as easily extracted oil becomes more dear, people will look for oil in more and more inaccesible places. In fact, the oil companies are planning for it. Angola is about to auction off deep sea tracts for oil exploration, and oil companies are jumping at the change to bid, even though the technology does not currently exist to anchor drilling platforms in deep water.
The Earth will just make more. It’s like…saliva!
You never run out of that, do you? Oh, maybe, briefly, sometimes. But just when you think you’ll be dry mouthed forever, there it is again. All the drool you need!
This is the same way it is with oil. Oil is the Earths saliva! There’s nothing to worry about.
Anyway, this theory is a valid as any other, as none of them have been 100% proven or disproven. About all us commoners can do is wait and see!
Relax, have a V-8. (engine, that is!:D)
Going back to questions about natural gas to liquid hydrocarbon technology I think the post was referring to Middle Distilate Synthesis technology rather than simple use of LPG. MDS is a Shell development - they a plant in Sarawak in Malaysia and a bit new investment just announced in Indonesia. Efficiency has come shooting up such that it is a good prospect for future.
Longer term renewables is the way to go - as demonstrated by some of the oil majors’ (especially BP-Amoco)investment in Solar, biomass, wind and wave energy production.
Discover magazine had an article on this last year.
I know a few people at BP-Amoco. These are political moves, pure and simple. They have no real intention of doing much with them. It is worth advertising $$ and “goodwill” $$.
I would recommend if possible checking out the PBS “Frontline” special recently which covered global warming, fossil, nuclear, renewable energy, etc. It was, IMO, mostly accurate. Renewables can play a big part, and conservation and demand-side management can play a bigger part, but overall I think at best we’re still going to need about 50% of our total energy to come from fossil and nuclear if we want to maintain our standard of living. Not to sell that short, but it still means we need to find other ways to reduce this (Hot Fusion, for example).
Of course, if our standard of living can be sacrificed, then we can go a lot lower on the fossil/nuclear use. Hard decisions all around.