Imagine if all the world’s oil fit into a 1 pint ice cream cup. The oil on top is easiest to get to and the oil at the bottom is the hardest. Now, we have to extract the oil with spoons. One spoonful per day per spoon. We start off with one spoon and for a long time things are fine. But more spoons start coming in and eventually we have to get longer spoons to reach down into the pint. As it gets harder to extract the oil less and less is extracted in a given day because some spoons drop out. But before that happens we reach a point where we have the maximum amount of extraction possible before the decrease in extraction ramps up.
When the decrease in extraction occurs we’re going to see some problems. More mouths are feed on this oil and unlike water or rice, there is a finite amount of oil and we’ll start running out. Prices will increase as supply can no longer meet demand. Economies will tumble because they rely on oil and can’t afford it. Potentially, wars will break out. The point in which we hit maximum extraction and start heading downhill is called peak oil. Thankfully we don’t have to start worrying about peak oil until after the turn of the millennium. I love that it’s only 1909.
Some would say that we’ve actually already hit peak oil. When oil prices spiked to over $140 a barrel, many first attributed this to peak oil saying demand has surpassed supply. Thankfully that didn’t work out but that was only the scare before the real storm. An Exxon-Mobil spokesperson said it best back in 2005:
All the easy oil and gas in the world has pretty much been found. Now comes the harder work in finding and producing oil from more challenging environments and work areas.
And he’s right. The peak in oil discoveries was back in 1965, we now discover less than 20% a year of what we did back then. So are we running out of oil? No duh! But don’t be scared just yet, I have good news.
The amount of oil in the world is estimated in what are called “reserves”. Peak oil takes these reserves into account, but peak oil does not include heavy crude oil, oil sands, and shale oil. These different types of oil are called “unconventional sources” because they are more difficult to turn into usable oil. This is for a number of reasons, but it boils down to the extraction and refining process using much more energy and kicking up even more greenhouse gases than the process used for conventional crude.
But like I said, I’ve got good news. The North American continent alone has enough of this stuff to rival all the oil in the middle east (much of it in Colorado and Wyoming), and some estimate the total amount of unconventional oil in the earth greatly exceeds the total amount of conventional oil.
You might be thinking this does us no good if we can’t get it out of the ground. Pessimists agree. It’s too expensive, the resulting oil couldn’t be sold on the market because of the high price, and it kicks up too much additional greenhouse gases. Don’t call me an optimist but I say all that crap is bunk. Whoever says this would have told Wilbur and Orville Wright back in 1900 that flying would never be a commercially viable form of transportation. Never underestimate the power of technological breakthroughs and the motivation for profit stirred by capitalism. I’ll always be amazed at how short-sighted humans are. You’ve seen those commercials from Exxon talking about their investments in green technologies. You might have wondered if that’s what they’re doing with all their record profits. Partly it’s true, but mostly they’re figuring out how to get to that oil in our backyards.
Should we rest easy then? Absolutely not. This green revolution thing is good and here to stay. We do have energy problems that will be faced in the lifetimes of most of the people reading this post. We might hit a shortage of conventional oil before we figure out how to get that stuff out of Colorado, however we might have a breakthrough tomorrow as well. Don’t be an idiot when it comes to your oil use, be a conscientious consumer.
Shell Photo: cactus23
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Said,
Said,
Worrying about “running out” of oil is silly–there’ll still be oil produced in 150 years, even if they’re spending small fortunes to extract fractions of a barrel for pharmaceuticals and boutique plastics.
Worrying about oil becoming too expensive to use the way we’re using it, on the other hand, is a much more real and urgent problem than most people give it credit for. Very high prices make it practical to use unconventional sources, but it doesn’t make it cheap.
I rather expect that high oil prices will become a defining characteristic of our economy, because high oil prices change everything: Whether we can afford to drive, how we get around if we can’t, where we live, and what we eat.
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