by
David K.
Member since:
April 29, 2007
How much oil do we have left?
November 23, 2007 12:50 PM EST
views: 2620
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comments: 55
| | I received an email from Michelle H earlier today with this question: " "You are the scientist...How many years of oil do we have left on the planet?
I'm thinking it is 35, or a number under 100?" In my response I got a bit wordy, so I thought I would copy it here and then see what opinions others have on the matter. I most certainly am not an expert on the oil reserves of the planet, so would be interested in corrections and/or expansions from both experts and anyone else interested in the topic. So, my response to Michelle's question:
This is not a question that can be answered until we run out. Anyone predicting how many years we have left is either 1) guessing, or 2) lying.
The fact is that we have a great deal of oil still in the ground, much of it in the US (e.g., in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of California, and in Alaska). However, we have decided through our voting and politics not to extract that oil. Meanwhile, oil is a commodity, which means it gets traded like all other commodities (think oranges and pork bellies). That is, the price is set not only by supply, but by speculation on what may happen to that supply. Political turmoil in the middle east, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and a few other places means that the speculators get to play games and thereby artificially force the price of oil up and down. Many people are making a great deal of money off this speculation because if you play your cards right you can make a profit when the price goes up and also when the price goes down (you could also lose your shirt). So the speculators make money and we pay higher costs because all of this causes uncertainty, which generally forces costs up.
I know I strayed from your question, so to get back to how many years of oil we have left, and assuming we can somehow quantify exactly how much oil is in the ground, the answer would still be we have no idea. We can plug tons of data (much of it estimated) into complex computer models (which are mostly unvalidated, meaning we don't really know how well they work), and forecast that we will run out of oil in x number of years. But we can change that number simply by refining the model (making the data more accurate or the model more detailed). So we could predict we have 20 years of oil left because China's increase in resource use (and inefficiency) will expand the demand by x-fold. But then if the US or China (or Russia or Japan or Europe) seriously changes it's energy usage by switching over to some combination of non-oil based power, we could extend the length of time we have oil to 100's of years. Or we could become even more wasteful, screw up the political dynamics affecting supply even more dreadfully than we've done over the last several years, or have some major catastrophe that destroys much of the oil extraction capability (e.g., destruction of the already limited refinery capacity), which of course could mean we run out of oil in 10 years.
Sorry. Not very fulfilling an answer I'm sure.
So, what do you all think? How many more years of oil do we have left?
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Comments: 55
It's actually bad practice on the part of the mideast and other big oil producers to keep the price artificially high indefinitely or to push the price up much higher. One of the things about many (but not all) of the other resources is that they are often a big up front investments, but a considerably smaller investment in the long run. Once you've invested in solar power, wind power, hydrogen fuel cells or biofuels, the incentive to go back to oil fades away (even if your concerns for global warming isn't a factor) even if th price is reduced. As governments, alarmed by global warming even if they aren't in this country, invest in these technologies and subsidize them, there is a potential to even reduce this initial cost.
I don't think our present usage can continue in the long run, though I'm not sure which force will rein it in first. I am certain it's not a good idea to run it to places where our options fall away.
However, this assumes solely market forces define our energy priorities. Clearly we have the power (no pun intended) to define our own future energy priorities now so as to give us more time and more capability to find alternatives. Because increased per capita resource utilization on top of increased capita (population) means increasing use of what oil we have remaining, which is finite at some level.
When the Soviets beat the US into space, President Kennedy restructured our national goals to put a man on the moon within the decade. It was done. Whenever we focus the national priorities on finding a solution, and saturate the researchers with funding, we rapidly are able to move the science forward. Think about it - when the dam breaks do we send out one sandbag a day for years? Of course not. We send the whole darn town out there with thousands of sandbags to stem the flow before it becomes a catastrophe. We prioritize because we have to. Now how about we prioritize before it's too late? What a novel concept.
American Leadership and War." You can view it at
American Leadership and War
We need to get going with solar and wind and and and... that way we never need to find out how much oil is left!
convert that old car to r134, the kits are cheap, easy to install yourself, once you have someone extract the r12, and it works fine. As for how much oil, it's more a question, anymore, of how much more time do we have, before we kill ourselves with fossil fuels.
This process could be used to process human and animal wastes, the contents of our landfils, trees damaged in storms, hospital waste and dangerous pesticides and other wastes. In other words it is a win-win process which produces no polution.
We do need to stop bringing the coal and oil out of the ground and sequester more carbon and the thermal depolymerization can give us the energy to do that. This is just one more use of solar energy since those hydrocarbons are all built by plants.
Of course, we need to actually get off our ... well we need to go ahead and produce the plants. :-)
China's previous consumption was primarily industrial or utility. Once China's citizens can afford domestic autos, they will need considerably more as will every other developed nation.
The amount of oil left might be unknown, but it is finite. Alternative, renewable energy sources, like nuclear, electrical, and solar will be among those that replace oil.
Help me get a publishing deal with a 10 rating
I'm not familiar with thermal depolymerization, but am interested in hearing more about it. The idea of energy from waste, in concept at least, seems to be a promising avenue for research. Is much research being done right now?
Agreed. We need a policy backed up by incentives to develop alternative energy sources and also to encourage the public to demand sustainable resource use.
Welcome. I look forward to your insights!
Unfortunately there really is no such thing as "our" oil. All oil is sold as commodity, so it's effectively just thrown into a pot. The per barrel cost of oil is worldwide, with the individual countries (or organizations like OPEC) have some control over supply, but not other factors like war, natural disasters (like Katrina and Rita knocking out several Gulf of Mexico oil platforms), and refining. I believe that most of the oil refining capacity is here in the US, so the crude bought from elsewhere still has to be refined into gasoline, heating oil, diesel, etc.
There is a disconnect between the cost of a barrel of oil and the cost of a barrel of gasoline. Consider that the average price of gas is lower per gallon now when a barrel of oil is somewhere around $100 then what it was a couple of years ago when oil was a "only" $70 a barrel. Why? Partly because of refining capacity, partly because of gamemanship in the commodities market, and partly because of political pressures. Either way, the long term solution is alternative energy since oil capacity is finite and unsustainable anyway.
It's easy to ask questions when you're as ignorant as I am... but I've been trying to find the answers to some of these questions and haven't found satisfactory answers.
Which would make the depletion allowance a farse!!
Problem with ethanol, especially the kind from corn, is that it is much less efficient, causes increased emissions, and forces the cost of a food item up considerable, which has a ripple effect through the economy. On its face it really isn't a very logical choice, but then it seems "natural" and is an eady win for politicians looking for reelection. Until we realize what a mess we've made of it.
I'd like to see science study this possibility a bit more...as there may actually be MORE to consider, than how MANKIND will function, when the oil is no longer available for our consumption. This may not even be the worst crisis. There could also be a question of how the EARTH will function, without it! Or if it even CAN!
Now, I'm no scientist, but I've been having this thought lately - what if the oil in the earth, provides a similar 'lubricating' function, as it often does, when used for our purposes? Could this perhaps be the reason why we are seeing an increase in earthquakes and their severity? (as well as other natural phenomenon associated with earthquakes - such as tidal waves) Because WE ARE REMOVING THE EARTH'S NATURAL LUBRICANTS, which perhaps might have helped the underground plates, upon which our entire world is resting, shift around a bit smoother, perhaps??
It's just a thought, I don't know if there's any scientific basis for it, or not...
What do you think?
GT.
I have wondered about the effect of the physical removal of oil. Obviously oil pumped from deep below the earth is taking up space in the rock. If we remove the oil, what fills that space? I know that drilling muds and fluids are pumped into the drill hole, but I was thinking that was more for lubrication (of the drill itself) rather than to replace the oil removed. We obviously don't have millions of barrels of material we cart out to the drill site to pump into the ground as we remove millions of barrels (a day) of oil.
So assuming we leave some gaps in between the rocks when we remove the oil, it makes sense that these gaps would eventually give way to the weight and pressure of the rock above. So does this collapsing, rearranging, etc. create seismic pressures that may or may not reverberate to the surface? Very interesting question. Perhaps I'll ask some friends that work at API.
Not to mention the environmental costs, which are too often not even considered in the economics of energy development.
buying it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.
AMORY LOVINS: We could get, by the way, a million new jobs and save a million old jobs that way, get rid of a quarter of our carbon dioxide emission that cause "global weirding." And we'd make a very handsome return, which is why that transition beyond oil can be led by business for profit. We're helping that happen now. We could also have largely or wholly phased out the emissions that are changing the climate
and we'd make money on the deal, because it's cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel. We could also have put an end to the spread of nuclear bombs, which the president rightly says are our biggest threat to national security. And we could have greatly dispersed the energy system. I mean, so called micro-power made last year a sixth of the world's total electricity and a third of its new electricity. Very few people understand that.
http://old.rmi.org/images/other/Energy/E06-07_TransCharlieRoseShow.pdf
CHARLIE ROSE: You used that nice expression about taking away their need to go fight
wars for oil in the Persian Gulf. And is it your political belief that we went there for — in the interest of protecting oil sources or trying to guarantee an oil source?
AMORY LOVINS: I don't think you can untangle it that neatly, but I think it's fair to say
even going back to the '91 operations when Iraq invaded Kuwait that we wouldn't have put half a million troops there if Kuwait just grew broccoli.
CHARLIE ROSE: But we were also worried about Saudi Arabia at that time too.
AMORY LOVINS: Well, we — still are and for a good reason. I mean, look...
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, but we didn't go to – I'm just trying to – I'm just trying to get a
sense of — because of where you come from in terms of your understanding of energy and therefore your conversations, whether this whole idea about the fact that we're there in Iraq in significant part because of their — they have the second largest reserves of oil I guess in the Middle East. Don't they? After Saudi Arabia?
AMORY LOVINS: Yes, they're big.
CHARLIE ROSE: Who is third? Iran?
AMORY LOVINS: Nobody knows exactly who has got what. You can't take their word for it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Fair enough.
AMORY LOVINS: This is also I think relevant to the peak oil argument.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.
AMORY LOVINS: When does production start to go down and price zoom up? Well, nobody knows. 94 percent of the oil you see is owned by governments, which either don't know or won't honestly say what they've got.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.
AMORY LOVINS: But it doesn't matter that you can't tell who is right, because we ought to do all the same things anyway just to save money.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is there any major oil producer nation that has not since owned its oil or taken it over? Most of them have. Saudi Arabia, Iran.
AMORY LOVINS: I think in the U.S., it's still largely a private function.
CHARLIE ROSE: But how much do we produce in contrast to everybody else?
AMORY LOVINS: Let's see. We own two or three percent of the world's oil. We produce
nine percent — and we use — or extract nine percent, and we use about 26 percent.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.
AMORY LOVINS: So, obviously we can't drill our way out of this one.
Therefore, alternative energy sources are a necessity, and getting more critical every minute.
Exactly. There is no shortage of available energy from renewable sources. Any claim to the contrary is a fossil/nuclear industry perpetuated myth. Renewable technologies are good enough now to deploy on a large scale. The only obstacles to a total and complete transfer to renewables are political and psychological.