# World Oil Reserves and Alternate Fuel **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 14, 2005, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-oil-reserves-and-alternate-fuel/312469 "2005-07-14T04:50:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AtomAnt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/82dd89/32.png) [@AtomAnt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AtomAnt)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-oil-reserves-and-alternate-fuel/312469/1 "2005-07-14T04:50:37Z")
For how long would the oil reserves last in the world, calculating the rapid growth of demand? i.e combining all exisiting and yet to be found oil reserves ( I assume somebody must have an idea about the total amount of oil which exists in the world ). Would there be a day when I wake up and find a signboard at service station saying " Petrol and Diesel finished. We are closing down" ? On the other hand if fossil fuel were not discovered as a means to power the world , would we have found some totally revolutionary way of generating power? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-oil-reserves-and-alternate-fuel/312469/2 "2005-07-14T05:21:55Z")
> [@AtomAnt](#): > > For how long would the oil reserves last in the world, calculating the rapid growth of demand? i.e combining all exisiting and yet to be found oil reserves ( I assume somebody must have an idea about the total amount of oil which exists in the world ). Would there be a day when I wake up and find a signboard at service station saying " Petrol and Diesel finished. We are closing down" ? Nobody really seems to have a good handle on how much oil reserves actually exist. 25 years ago, I remember my science teacher telling me tht oil reserves would be depleted…in 25 years. Part of the problem is that reserves are sometimes spontaneously replunished, presumably from deeper reserves. There are also known reserves that are simply too costly (currently) from which to extract oil, but which maybe be economically feasable to use if the price or availablility of oil becomes more critical. The (inevitable) depletion of oil reserves will probably be a somewhat more gradual (though still shocking, shocking) event, accentuated by the increasing demand of formerly industriallly retarded nations like China and India. > [@AtomAnt](#): > > On the other hand if fossil fuel were not discovered as a means to power the world , would we have found some totally revolutionary way of generating power? Biofuels (grown from plants and processed from animal wastes) could provide a substantial amount of energy, albeit a fraction of what is provided by coal, oil, and natural gas reserves. Solar energy, the ultimate source of all non-nuclear, non-geothermal energy on the planet, is a market barely tapped; the question is how to economically collect, store, and deliver it in a convenient manner. Nuclear power, although requiring advanced technology, is the ultimate in compactness, but suffers from the need of economies of scale; you’ll never see a car running on a fission pile, and unless the cold fusion advocates have more up their sleeves than they’ve been able to produce so far, it seems that fusion requires even larger installations. OTOH, plants get by just fine by storing and using the Sun’s provisions; they just do it much, much more slowly than we’d like. Niven and Pournelle’s _The Mote In God’s Eye_ and _The Gripping Hand_ deal (albeit with massive stretches of credibility in evolutionary theory) with a civilization that arises sans fossil fuel resources (owing to their depletion by previous civilizations). _The Integral Trees_ and _The Smoke Ring_, also by Niven, deal somewhat similarly with a civilization that has to develop with minimal material resources. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-oil-reserves-and-alternate-fuel/312469/3 "2005-07-14T05:38:57Z")
Well, since we _can_ produce [synthetic petroleum from biological waste,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization) and the world’s human population growth doesn’t show any signs of slowing… ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-oil-reserves-and-alternate-fuel/312469/4 "2005-07-14T12:31:32Z")
> [@AtomAnt](#): > > Would there be a day when I wake up and find a signboard at service station saying " Petrol and Diesel finished. We are closing down" ? Not likely. Google “peak oil”. Essentially what will happen is that it will get harder and harder to find and drill for oil. At some point (and when is still under debate) oil production will reach the highest point it will ever reach. From that point on, we will produce less and less oil but demand will continue to rise. Basic economics tells us that as demand increases and supply drops, prices will rise. Probably significantly. Eventually, it will take as much energy to drill for a barrel of oil as the oil itself is capable of producing. At that point you are better off not even drilling for it. So short answer is we will never “run out of oil”. It will just either be too expensive or too hard for anyone to get at. ---
**Author:** ![Can\_Handle\_the\_Truth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Can\_Handle\_the\_Truth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Can_Handle_the_Truth)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-oil-reserves-and-alternate-fuel/312469/5 "2005-07-14T13:36:45Z")
… and then we will switch to nuclear power. Do you really think that people will just meekly give up cars and electricity? ---
**Author:** ![Alien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/57b2e6/32.png) [@Alien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alien)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-oil-reserves-and-alternate-fuel/312469/6 "2005-07-14T15:20:45Z")
If you’re really interested, there’s an excellent (neutral) report, “Changing Oil” (2000), available from: > **[International Affairs Think Tank | Chatham House](https://www.chathamhouse.org)** > > Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, is an independent policy institute based in London. Discover what we do, visit our website today. The conclusion: > [@](#): > > 1. Reservoirs of ‘conventional’oil are finite. Discoveries of new reservoirs are only replacing a fraction of what we currently extract, but the fraction of the reservoir that is being extracted – the reserve – is increasing. At some point in the life of a reservoir production will decline and at some point in the life of a region the sum of these declines will outweigh the sum of the new discoveries and increases in recovery. Eventually the world may replicate the declines of the US, its most mature oil–producing area. Many analysts expect this to occur in the period 2010-20. > > 2. However, reservoirs of ‘unconventional’oil – heavy oil, tar sands and oil shale – are known to be very large, with oil in place many times that of conventional oil. The key question is the economics of extraction and conversion to oil products or synthetic crude. This is likely to follow a supply curve starting with present production, and growing as costs fall and the difficulty of extracting yet more from conventional reservoirs increases. This is also expected to occur in the period 2010–20. > > 3. About two-thirds of current world exports originate in countries where production is owned or closely controlled by the state, and where oil export revenues and rents are critical to a country’s balance of payments and budget. On mainstream present projections of demand and supply, most or all of these countries, principally in the Middle East, will reach peak production by 2010–20 or soon after. At that point they will no longer need to limit competition between each other. The threat or hope of ‘cheap oil’will have disappeared forever. However, it will not be replaced by a threat or hope for high-price oil. Competition from non-conventional oil, from different countries, with private investment, will limit price increases from 2020 onwards just as conventional non-OPEC oil did in 1980–2000. > > 4. It may be that oil production will peak not because of natural depletion of the resource base itself but as a result of environmental policy and/or falling demand, resulting in part from the replacement of oil by natural gas.