When and what happens when oil runs out: The answer

When will oil run out and what will happen when it does? These are the two main questions I wonder when I think about Oil peak. There is much evidence that points that we are at or near an oil peak.

www.jakeg.co.uk...

As you can see in this graph, it looks like most of these countries have hit oil peak or are at oil peak, except deepwater and polar which is expensive, dangerous, and very polluting to tap into. In fact, during the Persian Gulf War, the last time world oil prices were this high, the Alaskans said U.S. military security required opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Experts are estimating that the Arctic reserves will only last for 6 months to a year, and for what? Destruction of life? Apparently so, all we are doing is delaying the inevitable. This usually causes the gas prices to go down for a little, then people go out buying their gas guzzling SUVs, then the prices go up and they act surprised that they have to pay $80 to fill their gas tank. Every time the gas prices rise, it reminds Americans how much they depend on oil. Deepwater oil is very expensive too, don’t think it is easy to get oil under1 kilometer of water. The oil rig cost is about $300 to$400 million, and don’t think that will not effect the price of oil, in fact it already has, and if we are that desperate, then one must ask how much more oil will be available?

In 2005, oil demands have reached around 83 million barrels per day, according to this information, so the world will use up around 30,295,000,000 barrels by the end of the year. Ok, lets just say that the worlds oil reserves is 900 billion barrels ( I have heard many estimates, but this is an average). So 30 years of oil left? No, the world oil consumption is estimated to reach 91 million barrels per day in 2010, so in the year 2010, we will use around 33,215,000,000 barrels per year. It is estimated that the world oil consumption will reach 100 million barrels per day in 2020, so in that year the world will use about 36.5 billion barrels.

We can round those numbers to an average of 33 billion barrels per year in the next 15 years. 15 times 33 billion equals 495 billion, which is a little more than half of our reserves. Many people may think that is plenty of time, but they’re wrong. Many of these reserves will be hard to tap into, causing oil prices to rise. On top of that, oil will be getting rarer, which will also raise the price. Its more of a question of how long will it be until oil is so outrageous in price to where the average person cant afford it. I would say between 2010 and 2020. When this happens we will be forced to find an alternative fuel, but it wont be that easy.

When people think of oil, they think of cars, but the truth is that oil is used for so much more, and not just ovens and fireplaces. Oil is used for the computer screen in front of you to melt the plastic, and the window to the left of you. Oil is used for basically everything made out of metal, plastic, and glass, which is basically everything. The prices of all of these things will rise causing a depression. Haven’t you noticed how bottles of soda aren’t as cheep as 5 years ago? Could this be why? Ill leave that for you to answer. Then everyone would have to convert to a new fuel, which would cost a lot for companys to buy new equipment and people to buy new products. Also think about how much money the oil companies will loose. No more oil consumers = no more oil companies. No more oil companies = way less money in economy. Lets face it, switching to a new fuel will be difficult, but it would be easier to do it right now while we still have halfway affordable oil as a baisis. So the moral of this story is to switch to a new fuel, before it is too late!

Welcome to the beginning of the end……. If we don’t switch.


[edit on 3-7-2005 by BigPimpin]

Do you guys agree with me? If you have anything to add to this, go ahead.

if oil runs out we may have to go back to ridin bikes again., imagine all those Americans who would become like Lance Armstrong wen they have to go to work and home everyday till their retirement.

or that wen oil runs out we have all electric engines, or some other source of power.

I agree with what you are saying, but as for how long the oil will last, I think it will end up being quite a bit longer than we expect. What I am trying to say is that as the amount of oil left in the earth starts to go down, and prices start to go up, people will begin to look for alternatives. Perhaps putting solar cells on their roof for electricity, heating etc. Build better homes that require less energy to heat, start walking more and driving less. Moving closer to their jobs etc. At least I hope that this is what happens. I know that a common perception is that people are lazy and will use up every last drop of oil to drive their huge SUV two blocks to the local convenience store. But a very big motivator is money. I think if most people had to pay $10 to drive to the store, they would just assume walk.

I guess this is also assuming that no big refineries gets hit by Natural Disaster or Terrorist attack, that could put the pinch on us very quickly. Look at how much Oil jumped when news of that refinery that was damaged by the recent storms we've all been talking about? What about the future ones that are expected? What happens if Alberta doesn't get the 10mm bar/day quota by 2015?(That's the plan they have supposedly its doable That's my opinion of that one heh)

We are in a very tough spot right now, hopefully things will sort themselves out eventually but we should make plans just in case they don't! Move to a City with adequete mass-transit and is pedestrian/bycicle friendly. Shop locally for Food and Appliances(When/if that ever becomes possible, it might if the shipping costs continue to rise, we might have a new manufacturing boom this time for locally produced goods intended for the local market who knows, but it does make sense if gas prices continue to rise)

well i got great idea,we run opn pure ETHANOL we can grow it every year from farms WASTE products and it would finally give farmers a upper hand. as of now theres like 84 refinerys for ethanol in the u.s, bush wants us to have instead of 10-15%ethanol in our gas to have 25% by 2010.i hope it works out but i have a question, i heard people in wisconsin run on like 80% ethanol.

Originally posted by DCFusion
Perhaps putting solar cells on their roof for electricity, heating etc.

If I were in charge for a day that would be my first order. All new houses must be built with solar cells on the roof. I don't know why that's not a law now but it'd save quite a bit of energy.

steups.. That's just the myth that the oil cartels, and others want you to believe.. The oil will nevr run out.. We don't even know that it is a renewable resource... That's the myth for panic buying of western countries.. and driving up the oil prices.. skyhigh... Besides the Peak Oil Myth has been a myth since the beginning.....

The God of heaven & Earth will not give us such a resource that's not renewable..... Besides that's y he created everything in divine order and semblance..

Chris McGee says:

If I were in charge for a day that would be my first order. All new houses must be built with solar cells on the roof. I don't know why that's not a law now but it'd save quite a bit of energy.

The reason it's not law now is two-fold. Here in the United States you cannot mandate what people use for power any more than you can mandate polka dot ties with striped shirts and plaid pants. We have this thing called a "constitution"....

Second, photovoltaic (PV) modules are very expensive. In order to have enough PV cells to run the average house, you'd have to spend about $75,000 US up front, and an additional $15,000 US every five years; and you'd have to spend a lot of time and energy just managing your power system.

Finally, PV is a lot more polluting than most people think. first is the manufacturing process; making stuff out of silicon is dangerous work, and mining and refining the silicon leads to increased risk of silicosis and other cardiopulmonary diseases.

Also, the most cost-effective batteries used to store the electricity (so you can use it at night or when the sky is overcast) have to be replaced every five years or so, and that means each house would have to discard about a half-ton of lead compounds and gallons and gallons of sulfuric acid -- both of those components unhealthy and polluting in the extreme.

For heating water for cooking and cleaning, you can't beat individual solar collectors on each house; but solar is simply not a cost-effective method of producing electricity on a large scale.

Given that we already have a transmission infrastructure in place, the economies of scale make nuclear power the best approach, at least until we can come up with a newer way to make electricity.

just run on ethonal! its made of farm waste lol cheaper,clean burning and renewable

I keep repeating this on various posts: we are not running out of oil. Your assumption that we are overlooks a number of key factors:

1. There are still unexeplored or underexplored areas with good oil potential.

2. Rising prices makes renders old oil deposits economical to pump, thereby re-adding them to the reserves.

3. Rising prices will also stimulate more efficient use, conservation and development of alternative sources of energy.

4. Massive unconventional sources of oil, such as tar sands and oil shales, are not being counted as reserves - yet, that is, because the price of oil is not high enough to make them economical. But it will, eventually.

So, the answer to your question, what happens when the oil runs out? Well the price goes up, but the oil won't run out.

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
The reason it's not law now is two-fold. Here in the United States you cannot mandate what people use for power any more than you can mandate polka dot ties with striped shirts and plaid pants. We have this thing called a "constitution"....

Well, i'm from the UK and we generally use electricity and gas, you don't get a choice in how it's generated. Also, putting the cells on the roof doesn't mean you have to use them.

Second, photovoltaic (PV) modules are very expensive. In order to have enough PV cells to run the average house, you'd have to spend about $75,000 US up front, and an additional $15,000 US every five years; and you'd have to spend a lot of time and energy just managing your power system.

Again, I don't know too much about what it's like across the pond but here you can get a decent solar water heating roof kit for about £2000 and a solar power kit for about £5000. These wouldn't generate enough power to run the whole house but would cut down on the power being supplied by fossil fuels. Not sure what the additional $15,000 every five years is for? Batteries? Here, the system is set up to feed excess power back into the national grid (a similar thing is done with eco-friendly gas boilers) and you can be credited for the power you put back in.

Finally, PV is a lot more polluting than most people think. first is the manufacturing process; making stuff out of silicon is dangerous work, and mining and refining the silicon leads to increased risk of silicosis and other cardiopulmonary diseases.

True, but then you need to weigh that against the dangers mining coal or tapping gas and oil reserves. There will always be some risk to manufacturing anything.

For heating water for cooking and cleaning, you can't beat individual solar collectors on each house; but solar is simply not a cost-effective method of producing electricity on a large scale.

Ah, now I get to the end I see we actually agree. My theory goes that if each house can supply, say, 25% of their energy through solar then that would represent a big reduction in the amount of fossil fuels we're using. Also, when people are at work, not using much power in the house, the excess would be fed back into the grid eliminating the need for batteries and decreasing the fossil fuel load further.

Given that we already have a transmission infrastructure in place, the economies of scale make nuclear power the best approach, at least until we can come up with a newer way to make electricity.

Absolutely. I would support a massive extension of our nuclear power generation facilities here in the UK. Use nuclear as the base power generation and renewables (which can be inconsistent) to reduce the load on the nuclear facilities as and when they can.

Alex of Skye says:

I keep repeating this on various posts: we are not running out of oil. Your assumption that we are overlooks a number of key factors:

1. There are still unexeplored or underexplored areas with good oil potential.

Yes; and maybe we'll find lot of oil there -- or maybe we won't.

2. Rising prices makes renders old oil deposits economical to pump, thereby re-adding them to the reserves.

True. but "economical to pump", in this case, doesn't mean that the cost per barrel goes down, it means that (some) people will buy $150/barrel oil because they need it for something.

3. Rising prices will also stimulate more efficient use, conservation and development of alternative sources of energy.

True again; but there is a "point of no return" where efficiency and conservation will fall behind the price curve. It might be at $150/bbl or $750/bbl, but sooner or later we will reach an efficiency / conservation "brick wall".

4. Massive unconventional sources of oil, such as tar sands and oil shales, are not being counted as reserves - yet, that is, because the price of oil is not high enough to make them economical. But it will, eventually.

True yet again; but again, we will reach the brick wall where we can't afford to pump oil shale and tar-sands oil out of the ground at $750/bbl.

So, the answer to your question, what happens when the oil runs out? Well the price goes up, but the oil won't run out.

I think that's a disingenuous argument. Sooner or later, the cost of extraction will be such that there might as well not be any oil left. At that point, from an economic standpoint, we can say that "there isn't any oil".

And at that point -- when there is no economically viable source of oil -- it will be about thirty years too late to begin thinking about converting. If we don't get a cost-effective alternative source and infrastructure in place now, we won't be able to make the switch.

And that, to paraphrase Hamlet, is " ... a consummation devoutly to be avoid'd".

Originally posted by AlexofSkye
4. Massive unconventional sources of oil, such as tar sands and oil shales, are not being counted as reserves - yet, that is, because the price of oil is not high enough to make them economical. But it will, eventually.

No, it is an energy consumption problem. Why burn 3 barrells of oil to extract only two? Once a quicker and more energy effecient method has been found, then it becomes possible.

Chris McGee, you make a lot of good points. However, there's a difference between having your utility provide electricity from hydrocarbons vs. nuclear and being forced to subsidize the price of you own power-station on your roof.

Now, I have four 40-watt PV modules which I use to charge batteries, and will use it to charge my bride's electric bike when we get it this fall. But I used to do that stuff for a living, and I'm not being responsible for my entire house. This is one case where, in all likelihood the economies of scale go with a centralized power source, especially since you have the infrastructure already in place.

You mention that you can get a solar power "kit" for about ten thousand dollars and a solar hot water heter for about $4000 (I'm assuming a 2-1 conversion between pounds sterling and US$)

First, your costs for the hot water heater are very high, but that's probably because you live in a place where solar energy is very inefficient. I live in Arizona, where we have about 6 sun-hours of insolation /day in the summer and 4.5 sun-hours/day in the winter. That is hard to beat.

You say your $10,000 system "...wouldn't generate enough power to run the whole house but would cut down on the power being supplied by fossil fuels."

Our systems are also set up to feed excess power back into the grid (mains, I guess you guys call it), which means you won't have to cough up the $15k every 5 years for the lead-acid batteries. In effect, you're using the grid itself for a storage battery.

The problem with that is that (at least here in the US) we sell our electricity back at avoided cost, which is what it would cost the utility to generate and provide it. Typically, this is about one-half of what they will turn around and sell you. Another down side is that, since you're always hooked up to the grid, you must, by law, have a circuit which kills your power whenever the grid goes down due to, say storms. This is to keep the electric company lineman from getting fried by your system when he's up there repairing what he assumes is a dead circuit!

What this means is that, if the grid goes down due to storms -- just the time when you'd need your own autonomous supply -- your home generating system goes dead, too!

This is not the end of the world, but you can see that having a home PV system hooked up to the national grid is not the panacaea that you might think.

You mention that you you have to consider tradeoffs vis-a-vis pollution of PV against tapping gas and oil rslerves.

Absolutely! You are thinking like an engineer here! The fact of the matter is that, despite wishful thinking of neo-Luddites, there is no "magic bullet". It behooves all of us as smart consumers (who actually get a chance to vote on power policy if we're lucky) to determine what's the most cost-effective (cost in terms of dollarrs, safety, health, and geopolitical interests) energy source and go with that source (or that mix of sources).

I'd like to respond to or elaborate on some of the points made in response to my original post:

Frosty:

quote: Originally posted by AlexofSkye
4. Massive unconventional sources of oil, such as tar sands and oil shales, are not being counted as reserves - yet, that is, because the price of oil is not high enough to make them economical. But it will, eventually.


No, it is an energy consumption problem. Why burn 3 barrells of oil to extract only two? Once a quicker and more energy effecient method has been found, then it becomes possible.

True, no-one in their right mind will burn 3 to get 2. That's losing money, not making it. The real issue is that it might take, say 3/4 of a barrel of energy to produce 1. (these figures are just for argument's sake - I haven't researched it). However, over time we tend to reduce the cost of production through newer technologies, techniques and efficiencies. What we need to remind ourselves of is the enormous scale of the oil shales. They are truly huge. See en.wikipedia.org...

However, I also concede that they present significant development problems and are expensive to extract - at today's oil price.

Off the Street:

Allow me to clarify. In the strictest sense, there is obviously a finite amount of oil in the world. Some day, if we keep using it, it will run out. What I'm reacting to is the idea that some people seem to have gotten into their heads that this will happen anytime soon. It won't. That day is centuries off, not a few years off, for the reasons I mentioned.

Yes; and maybe we'll find lot of oil there -- or maybe we won't.

Neither of us can predict the future, but we can make reasonable projections from past experience. I know from research reports on Canadian junior oil producers that although they are already producing oil on their lands, some of them have lots more drilling to do to find all of it. Believe me, its there. But its not just the mature oil producing areas. Oil companies have been salivating for years to drill of the coast of British Columbia. Why don't they? Our left wing government is afraid of the environmentalists. As I mentioned, there are parts of the world that have so far been neglected due to remoteness or political problems. Oil companies are willing to make major investments in finding all this oil. In some places they won't. But in some they will.

True. but "economical to pump", in this case, doesn't mean that the cost per barrel goes down, it means that (some) people will buy $150/barrel oil because they need it for something.

I didn't say the price will go down. (Although I suppose it might, if there's a recession, if there's political trouble in China, etc). Assuming current consumption growth, however, what I'm asserting is that higher prices will make further supplies available, from whatever source: new oil fields as discovered, oil sands/shale exploitation, "saved" supplies from more efficient use, and so forth.

Concerning your other points, well, I think they're good points as far as they go. How orderly our transition to other energy sources (or, less demanding lifestyles) will be is a matter for sheer speculation at this time. I'm not inclined to the apocalyptic predictions, however.

well i guess they will go to the water car. separating hydrogen from the water. hydrogen is very exsplosive. it would be used in cylinder cars. hydrogen engines are in the works. chaska, mn entegris.

Originally posted by kaitus
well i guess they will go to the water car. separating hydrogen from the water. hydrogen is very exsplosive. it would be used in cylinder cars. hydrogen engines are in the works. chaska, mn entegris.

This sounds like a great solution for our vehicle problem. We've all seen the huge increase in hybrid concept vehicles. I've seen media for a new hybrid that recharges it's it's battery every time you use the brakes. I believe this is just a small piece of a massive development of "evnironment safe" vehicles. Hopefully they can simplify the process so they will be affordable.

On the topic of energy on the global scale, what if we were to take that energy and institute it into a greater scale. I'm no expert on this idea, maybe someone could shed some light on what we have in the works. I know we have some power plants like hydro-electric dams

www.usbr.gov...

Like I said before, maybe someone could share some ideas we have about future power plants

You never mentioned global warming and the effects it is having on the alaskan region (where the adminstration is eager to drill) which will make it impossible for large trucks to travel in and out of. The tundra in Alaska is not frozen enough days out of the year for trucks to travel on because the permafrost is thawing which is already causing structural damage to the pipeline. Also, you never mentioned why the current U.S. administration is in such a rush to democratize the middle east. It's no secret the bush administration is practically married to oil companies who in all reality run this government not environmentalists. Example, the bush administration eased environmental laws letting unregulated diesel trucks cross our california border from Mexico which will result in more pollution.

Originally posted by AlexofSkyeNeither of us can predict the future, but we can make reasonable projections from past experience. I know from research reports on Canadian junior oil producers that although they are already producing oil on their lands, some of them have lots more drilling to do to find all of it. Believe me, its there. But its not just the mature oil producing areas. Oil companies have been salivating for years to drill of the coast of British Columbia. Why don't they? Our left wing government is afraid of the environmentalists. As I mentioned, there are parts of the world that have so far been neglected due to remoteness or political problems. Oil companies are willing to make major investments in finding all this oil. In some places they won't. But in some they will.





[edit on 18-4-2007 by sgcap]

The endof the oil suply has long been somewhat of a nightmare of mine. I think that humans are slow to change... slower than we neede to be in this case. We would run out of oil, then not be able to change over to other fuel sorces quickly enough. I am aware of couse, as are all humans, that food is grown or made all over the place, and shipped around in large trucks. No oil, no fuel for those trucks. No fuel, no transport. No transport, no food supply... except of course what we can grow ourselves.