When the last oil well runs dry

BBC News Online ^ | Monday, April 19, 2004 | By Alex Kirby

[Momaw Nadon]

Just as certain as death and taxes is the knowledge that we shall one day be forced to learn to live without oil.

Exactly when that day will dawn nobody knows, but people in middle age today can probably expect to be here for it.

Long before it arrives we shall have had to commit ourselves to one or more of several possible energy futures.

And the momentous decisions we take in the next few years will determine whether our heirs thank or curse us for the energy choices we bequeath to them.

Sunset industry? Oil production could soon peak

Industry's lifeblood

There will always be some oil somewhere, but it may soon cost too much to extract and burn it. It may be too technically difficult, too expensive compared with other fuels, or too polluting.

An article in Scientific American in March 1998 by Dr Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere concluded: "The world is not running out of oil - at least not yet."

"What our society does face, and soon, is the end of the abundant and cheap oil on which all industrial nations depend."

They suggested there were perhaps 1,000 billion barrels of conventional oil still to be produced, though the US Geological Survey's World Petroleum Assessment 2000 put the figure at about 3,000 billion barrels.

Who holds the world's oil - and how long will it last?

Too good to burn

The world is now producing about 75 million barrels per day (bpd). Conservative (for which read pessimistic) analysts say global oil production from all possible sources, including shale, bitumen and deep-water wells, will peak at around 2015 at about 90 million bpd, allowing a fairly modest increase in consumption.

On Campbell and Laherrere's downbeat estimate, that should last about 30 years at 90 million bpd, so drastic change could be necessary soon after 2030.

And it would be drastic: 90% of the world's transport depends on oil, for a start.

Most of the chemical and plastic trappings of life which we scarcely notice - furniture, pharmaceuticals, communications - need oil as a feedstock.

The real pessimists want us to stop using oil for transport immediately and keep it for irreplaceable purposes like these.

In May 2003 the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), founded by Colin Campbell, held a workshop on oil depletion in Paris.

Changed priorities

One of the speakers was an investment banker, Matthew Simmons, a former adviser to President Bush's administration.

From The Wilderness Publications reported him as saying: "Any serious analysis now shows solid evidence that the non-FSU [former Soviet Union], non-OPEC [Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries] oil has certainly petered out and has probably peaked...

"I think basically that peaking of oil will never be accurately predicted until after the fact. But the event will occur, and my analysis is... that peaking is at hand, not years away.

"If I'm right, the unforeseen consequences are devastating... If the world's oil supply does peak, the world's issues start to look very different.

"There really aren't any good energy solutions for bridges, to buy some time, from oil and gas to the alternatives. The only alternative right now is to shrink our economies."

No cheap oil, no cheap food

Planning pays off

Aspo suggests the key date is not when the oil runs out, but when production peaks, meaning supplies decline. It believes the peak may come by about 2010.

Fundamental change may be closing on us fast. And even if the oil is there, we may do better to leave it untouched.

Many scientists are arguing for cuts in emissions of the main greenhouse gas we produce, carbon dioxide, by at least 60% by mid-century, to try to avoid runaway climate change.

That would mean burning far less oil than today, not looking for more. There are other forms of energy, and many are falling fast in price and will soon compete with oil on cost, if not for convenience.

So there is every reason to plan for the post-oil age. Does it have to be devastating? Different, yes - but our forebears lived without oil and thought themselves none the worse.

We shall have to do the same, so we might as well make the best of it. And the best might even be an improvement on today.

[Willie Green]

I just wish we WOULD use our military for such a straight-forward purpose ...

Shed American blood for foreign oil?

You're a jack@$$.

[Exton1]

It's like calling wolf, they have been predicting the end of oil for 50 years.

[BlueLancer]

"You're a jack@$$."

I'll wear that as a badge of honor coming from a Brigadier Blackshirt.

[RightWhale]

This Peak Easy Theory is getting serious attention. Oil has been cheaper than dirt, cheaper than water, and cheaper than air. A small increase in the cost of oil leverages big into the economy. When oil costs what wind and solar cost, we will use wind and solar, but wind and solar cannot replace oil; wind and solar can replace about 1/4 of oil. Energy use will drop to 1/4 at the same time that prices of food and manufactured goods increase 4X. This has nothing to do with environmentalism.

[Willie Green]

Your anti-American ethnic bigotry is so-noted.

[DHerion]

How come no one mentions thermal depolymerization process? If this technology does what its creators boast - converting ordinary, carbon-based garbage into oil/natural gas then we have an inexhaustible supply of energy. They claim they can produce oil at $15 per barrel. Even if it costs twice that much its cheap compared to todays oil prices.

[xzins]

Any comments on the following found at: http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/tesla-lightning.htm

Nikola Tesla: Power from Lightning
Nikola Tesla was the first electrical engineer to harness the awesome power of nature at Niagara Falls. In 1910 he tried to take harnessing the power of nature one step further. He designed a system to harness the power of lightning. J. P. Morgan shut him down.

The average lightning bolt contains a billion volts at 3,000 amps, or 3 billion kilowatts of power, enough energy to run a major city for months. The United States gets hit with 4,000 lightning bolts a day.

Lightning is a discharge of static electricity. The idea of using electrostatic energy for power is not a new one. Benjamin Franklin built an electrostatic motor in the eighteenth century.

Nikola Tesla was the first to conceive of using a tower to attract lightning and harness it. Tesla did not believe in pilot projects.

We do. The system shown in the photo will deliver enough power to light a 25-watt light bulb for slightly over 6 seconds using a static discharge source from a rectifier, which in turn gets its electricity from a wall socket. Any static discharge from any source will charge the capacitors in this system. Capacitors, unlike batteries, can be charged instantaneously.

The wall socket is for convenience. Scale this device up and you could charge it with a lightning bolt (not something we would recommend at this point. Make a mistake and you’ll be vaporized).

This may not look like much but:


1. It works.
2. The principle can be modified and scaled up.

3. The device may look crude, the work area cluttered and the power it produces short-lived.

Now go back exactly 100 years to the first flight of the Wright Brothers airplane at Kitty Hawk in 1903.

Their first flight lasted twelve (12) seconds.

[BlueLancer]

"Your anti-American ethnic bigotry is so-noted."

Why? Are you going to report me to the Block Gauleiter?

[Edit35]

And by the way, every year new oil deposits are discovered as well as new methods to develop previously unpracticable huge deposits, like the one in Canada that is greater than the Saudi's.

So true. We haven't even begun to do oil exploration in Antarctica, or Sub Saharian Africa, or SouthEast Asia, or many parts of the world.

I also read we have 300 years of coal supply (at today's usage rates) just in the USA if we would be forced to switch everything from oil to coal.

And as someone else mentioned already, there is also an untold amount of frozen methane hydrates on the ocean floors. We just haven't figured out how to recover them safely.

Certainly as a human race, we should try and conserve, but I am sure we have hundreds of years of oil supply available before we would have to devise a way to do deep, deep drilling.

By then, I believe we will develop hydrothermic power by drilling deep into the earth to extract lava power.

[Tribune7]

Same here. And because of that I automatically discount anyone who claims oil or anything else runs out.

And let us not forget Julian Simon's famous bet with Paul Ehrlich

[Beckwith]

So, Dr Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere concluded we're going to ru out of oil in 2030?

Chicken Little concluded the sky was falling.

But, of course, The Wilderness Publications concurrs and they have no agenda.

So this guy wants to go back to our forefathers and mothers, when it took 3 months to cross the country.

Where do these nuts come from?

[djf]

Supposedly, there's a little chunk of real estate that England went to war over a few years back, that has more oil than all the other reserves on the planet put together.

The continental shelf off of South America near the Falkland Islands.

[RightWhale]

How come no one mentions thermal depolymerization process?

Mentioning this doesn't get it. Plants have to be built. Action is required. Or was required. It's too late now, nothing we do can stop our plunge over the economic cliff.

[Willie Green]

Are you going to report me to the Block Gauleiter?

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that reference.
Nevertheless, my ideal view of America is that of a peaceful melting-pot,
NOT a factionally divisive rainbow coalition of multicultural ethnocentric bigots...
And I refuse to shed American blood for the purpose of supporting your favored flavor of ethnic hatred simply because you childishly point to some other ethnic boogeyman as your oppressor.

[BlueLancer]

LOL

[KC_for_Freedom]

Aspo suggests the key date is not when the oil runs out, but when production peaks, meaning supplies decline. It believes the peak may come by about 2010.

Eh, It believes? does It have any other reason? arguement, tables and statistics? I don't think much of It.

And where are the recommendations for development of nuclear fuel. If oil is too precious to burn, certainly the free world should have lots of nuclear power plants.?

[Reeses]

The United States sits atop enough coal to supply our country will all its energy needs for the next 2,000 years. Technologies will eventually be developed for turning coal into energy without burning it. And much sooner than 2,000 years we'll have technology to not need coal.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

And I suppose you naively believe Iraq is simply about terrorism and not about oil.

Me thinks you assume to much in an attempt to not be naive. Bush is risking much more than he would for oil. After all without Iraq oil our oil would only go up a few cents, much less than the recent rise. He is risking his political career which would be much more secure without Iraq.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

Energy is really inexhaustible for all practical purposes

Energy yes oil no.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

Shed American blood for foreign oil?

You seem to be the naive one. Americans and people of all nations have died for a patch of land. Seems to me to die for a stable oil supply is just as noble as that. But Iraq is not about that. If it were Bush would have been complaining about Saudi's makeing WMD's and supplying Bin Ladin, not Saddam.