Quite a lot of people were saying that the US was “on the wrong side of history” in 1962. Including a lot of its erstwhile friends, sometimes for precisely opposite reasons.
US “proven” oil reserves are at about 40,000 million barrels. The US produces about 4,000 million barrels/year.
The US is “proving” new reserves at about 2,000 million barrels per year.
I make it that the proven reserves are good for 20 years. That is, if the “proven” reserves only increase at the decadal average rate.
Which wont happen, as “proven” reserves are fictional. Estimates of recoverable petroleum including shale oil reserves are upwards of 800,000 million barrels, and that number is also increasing.
That gives the US 200 years of petroleum.
Reserves are complicated.
On day 1 they will have a number. On day 10 the price has changed and the number will then be different. The SEC has created rules for defining reserves because companies put them on their balance sheet as assets. Meaning, that’s how they got involved. There are P1, P2 and P3 reserves.
The reality is the true numbers are defined by Geology, not the SEC. The official 1P proven reserves number for the US is 68 billion barrels. You’re off about 1.5X. The estimate is suspect regardless. 1P is economically practical and that can end even without a price cut.
Russia, of course, is at 107 billion and that does not include the Bazhenov shale.
Shale is not a technology reality. Russia was doing fracking as far back as the 1970s. Rather, it has been a zero interest rate reality. Borrowed money paid for unprofitable wells and there was no foreclosure. When this was seen, naturally the wells became profitable. If you have no interest expense, and no repayment schedule, it’s pretty easy to be profitable.
T Boone Pickens famous joke: An oil man walks into his lender’s office and sits down. The lender asks what happened on this well #1. The oil man says #1 has been a nasty problem. Some things happened we did not expect, but thankfully it could have been worse. The lender says I see, and what of #2? Oh, #2 was a different issue. A big disappointment for sure, but it could have been worse. The lender glares and says . . . #3? Oh, that #3 well has been both an annoyance and a disappointment. Hard to fathom, but thankfully it could have been worse.
How!!! How could it be worse? Oh, that’s easy. We could be losing our money instead of yours.
There are other ways. The notorious story of NPRA (Nat Petroleum Reserve Alaska) was assessed with reserves of about 9 billion barrels in 2003. In 2008 the USGS revised that. To 850 million barrels. A loss of 90%.
Natural gas is a much stickier reality. US nat gas reserves are 12.6 trillion cubic meters. Production (mostly consumption, some export) is about 1 trillion cubic meters/year.
Russia is the world’s big kahuna with 37 Trillion cubic meters. Production, 0.6 Trillion/yr. They will outlast pretty much everyone. And soon. #2 and #3 are Iran and Qatar. Their sum exceeds Russia, but it is all in one place, the big shared field under the Persian Gulf. Pretty easy to see how that could get erased.
When your civilization depends on what is underground, the country with the most ground is the wrong enemy.
Proven reserves and how long they will last is an interesting topic. In the 70s we were at “peak oil”
The fact that we are producing more oil now than then gives pause to predictions.
“Proven “ reserves and how long they will last also leaves out technological improvements and to me the most important IMO, oil is not a set amount that we just have to “find”. Oil is being produced by the earth daily, and the term “fossil “ fuels has to be one of the biggest falsehoods ever pushed.
Even as a kid it struck me that oil and gas coming from such depths couldn’t possible be the result of decaying plant matter let alone “dead dinosaur” remains.
Think about the perfect conditions organic matter would have to attain for it to end up thousands of feet below ground and be converted to hydrocarbons , and be in the perfect geological structure to be captured to be able to later be extracted..
Thousands of animals die every year and do they end up 500 let alone 5000 feet deep making oil, or do they rot or are consumed by other animals within weeks.
Also interesting is that as I recall, it was the Soviets who first proposed the abiotic theory of hydro carbon creation, and directed their bases for searching for reserves.
Other discoveries also made me question the “fossil fuel “ narrative, one being the moon Titan, were there vast fields of plant life and dinosaurs roaming that moon at some time that created a moon with such huge amounts of hydrocarbons that dwarf the earths “reserves” so much so that there are literally liquid hydrocarbon oceans?
With that said is it possible that even with the earth producing new hydrocarbon deposits, and/or refreshing old and newly discovered deposits, that demand could still outstrip this production? I would say yes, but even as the 70s predicted “peak oil”, I don’t think we have a clue as to what is down there and how much new deposits are there and being still produced