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Two big questions:how much oil is there?when will we reach the midpoint?
Note switch in units from quadrillion BTU to billions of barrels.
“How much” depends on who you ask.
Two US government agencies—DOE and USGS—vary widely in their estimates.
My opinion, based on the hours of reading I have done, is that economists tend to believe there is more oil still to be produced than do geologists.
It depends on whether you count oil you know is there, or oil you think might be there, or oil you hope is there.
It depends on whether you count oil that is “useless” right now because it costs too much to extract and process.It depends on whether you count oil tied up in shale rocks. It takes twice as much energy to extract that oil as you get when you burn it.
Estimates of oil reserves vary from 1 GBarrels to 3 GBarrels.BP (world’s 3rd largest* oil company; recently merged with Amoco) says about 1 GBarrels at the end of 2002.
*Larger oil companies: ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch/Shell.
EIA says 1,342 billion barrels of proved reserves as of January 1, 2009.
“Proved reserves” are those recoverable with current technology under current economic conditions. The figure includes the Canadian oil sands.EIA is Energy Information Administration—part of US Department of Energy.
Back to this slide—the Hubbert curve—which I showed earlier. The figures in red at the right represent estimates of the total amount of the world’s recoverable oil.
2000 GBarrels is probably reasonable (in line with BP). Even the optimistic (2600) and pessimistic (1800) scenarios differ by only a decade and a half in turnover year.
Before I pursue the scenarios suggested by the previous slide further, I want to address three important questions.
Isn’t there a lot more oil to be discovered?
Accurate figures on oil reserves are closely-held national and industrial secrets. The figures I have shown are reasonable estimates. But aren’t nations likely to be “hiding” the amount of oil they have?
Maybe not so important, but interesting anyway: what is the meaning of the “bumps” in the oil imports and oil production graphs?
Isn’t there a lot more oil to be discovered?
The optimistic view: there’s lots left to discover. (I’m from Missouri.)
The pessimistic view: we’ve found it all. Even reported reserves are exaggerated.
The in-between view: we’ll find some more, but probably no more giant discoveries.
As oil prices inevitably rise, harder-to-produce oil and alternative energy sources will become more “attractive.”
Didn’t Brazil discover a HUGE offshore oil field in 2007?
Yes, estimated to be between 5 and 8 billion barrels of oil.
Remember how long 10 billion barrels lasts us? Also, remember, the US uses about ¼ of the worlds oil.
Not to belittle 8 billion barrels of oil, but it’s not a long-term solution.
I’m not sure if this report is the same as the 0 to 33 billion barrel discovery I mentioned earlier!
Recently a huge oil field was discovered in Canada.
I’ve seen this Internet myth circulated many times.
The Athabasca oil sands have been known about by Europeans since 1719. Not exactly recent.
More oil than the Middle East. Biggest oil reserve in the world.Not much production yet because it is expensive and resource-intensive (requires vast amounts of water and significant energy input). Some claim production=environmental disaster.
Opinion: production of this oil is viable as long as prices are high. Its production won’t bring down the price of oil. Environmental impact is irrelevant (I’ll explain in class).
The next slide is a screen capture from http://www.hubbertpeak.com/summary.htm. On that web page they give the sources for the data.
Aren’t nations likely to be “hiding” the amount of oil they have?
DOE gives a chronology of world oil prices…
US Oil Importsthrough 2005
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One more thing—did you wonder about the “bumps” in this graph?
Skip to slide 24.
Not adjusted for inflation ($25 in 2003 buys much less than $25 in 1980).
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Inflation???
If you adjusted for inflation…
Not adjusted for inflation ($25 in 2003 buys much less than $25 in 1980).
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Ok, end of digression on three questions.
Where is all this leading?
Oil is finite.
We’re “using it up” (on the scale of a human lifetime).
We’re not going to “use up” all the world’s oil. We’re going to consume the easily-recovered oil. The rest will be there, but very expensive. As cost goes up, consumption will go down.If someone says “we have 100 years worth of oil left,” they probably mean that world oil reserves will be depleted after 100 years.
Although I don’t see depletion happening like this, “100 years left” is a reasonable way to put supply and use in perspective.
Worst-case scenario…
If the US rate of oil consumption continues to increase……and if third world consumption rate doubles (because they aspire to be “like” us)…*
…we could “use up” all the oil within 2 decades.
To avoid the worst-case scenario, either the US needs to reduce its consumption of oil, or the third world needs to stay poor (or both).
*One effect of outsourcing???
Some “years left” estimates I found when preparing these notes for Physics 6 in Winter 2001. Unfortunately, I found these on the web, and the links very quickly disappeared:The American Petroleum Institute said we don’t need to worry about oil supplies, because there was 45 years’ worth at then-current consumption rates.
Don’t worry? Argh!
BP (British Petroleum, since merged with Amoco) said on their web site that there were 43 years worth of oil left.The author of your Environmental Issues book shows an estimate that suggests oil will “run out” around 2040.Three rather consistent estimates, two coming from oil industry sources.
Why this “no worry” attitude from industry?
Perhaps more reasonable is to estimate that we have 50-70 years to find replacements for all our uses of oil.
Given the fact that it often takes 50 years for fundamental research to find practical applications, we need to get to work on this problem now.
And by the way—it doesn’t matter what I believe or what you believe—or what the Republicans believe or what the Democrats believe—or what Greenpeace believes or what the Heritage Foundation believes—when you are consuming a finite resource, it will eventually run out.The important questions are: when? and will you be prepared?And why are we burning oil? (Ever heard of plastic?)
As you might imagine, not everybody would agree with the assessment above.
This web site stated in 2003 that “predictions that oil supplies will dry up within a few years have been common over the last 150 years.”
The idea being that if past predictions have all been wrong, then current ones probably are too.
I don’t quite understand how people could have been predicting 150 years ago that oil supplies would dry up, considering the Oil Age began with the Drake Well in Pennsylvania in 1859. According to my math, 2003-1859=144, so evidently predictions had been made that oil will dry up even before people started pumping it.
Here’s the text, for our detailed consideration and study.
“29-01-03 Predictions that oil supplies will dry up within a few years have been common over the last 150 years. The world had produced a total of 900 bn barrels of oil by 2000 -- yet estimates of the total amount of oil resources still in the ground grew throughout the 20th century.
For example: In May 1920, the US Geological Survey announced that the world's total endowment of oil amounted to 60 bn barrels. In 1950, geologists estimated the world's total oil endowment at around 600 bn barrels.
From 1970 through 1990, their estimates increased to between 1,500 and 2,000 bn barrels. In 1994, the US Geological Survey raised the estimate to 2,400 bn barrels, and their most recent estimate (2000) was of a 3,000-bn-barrel endowment.”
Where’s the discovery that caused USGS to raise their estimates in 1994 and 2000?
“This is possible because the world's oil endowment is much larger than its oil reserves -- which are identified resources that can be economically extracted and refined using current technology.
As new technologies increase the amount of recoverable oil, and market prices encourage new exploration and development, the world's total endowment goes up. But the world's oil endowment does not include unconventional oil resources. Oil shales, for example, could easily be as large as 14,000 bn barrels -- more than 500 years of oil supply at 2000 production rates. Nor do they include other fossil fuels, such as natural gas and coal.
Unconventional oil resources are more expensive to extract and produce, but we can expect production costs to drop with time as improved technologies increase efficiency.” Remember, this is from a “don’t worry” skeptic.
This is supposed to be a lecture on fossil fuels, but I’ve been focusing on oil.
Let’s look briefly at coal.
The US is fortunate to have abundant coal supplies.
Missouri is a major producer of coal.
Remember this energy budget, from the start of this lecture?
A “don’t worry, keep consuming” source I found preparing this lecture in 2001 stated that the US currently has a 1500 year supply of coal, at the then-current usage rate.Remember our growth and use simulations?
Let’s do a coal-use simulation.
Things to be aware of: coal depletes much faster if it replaces oil and natural gas the coal that we have in abundance is low grade and burns poorly the low-grade coal that we might try to gasify is in arid regions and requires enormous amounts of water for gasification oil shales are abundant too, and even more difficult to exploit burning coal produces lots of CO2
Something else to be aware of:
there is no other convenient fuel that gives your car as much “zip” as gasoline; nothing abundant comes close
the 1500 year coal supply figure came from one of those “don’t worry, keep consuming” sources;your Environmental Issues author suggests about 250 years;this article notes a claim of 250 years supply was made in the 1970’s with minimal data to support it, and suggests that a 100 year supply might be more accurate
we’d better re-run that coal use simulation assuming a 250 year supply
Do I have a message for you?
Start investigating all possible alternatives NOW.
Why aren’t “we” doing investigating alternatives already?
A few are. More now than last time I taught Phys. 6.
But when has the great mass of humanity ever looked decades ahead and spent massive amounts of money to solve a possible problem 50 years in the future?
I’m worried that I’m starting to sound like a tree-hugger!
