Running Dry - Crude Oil & The End of the World as We Know It

Introduction from an Average Joe...

Oil is a finite commodity. We all know this, there is no argument, no dispute. All those prehistoric animals and plants, decaying into that slimy substance we call crude oil – well, there have only been so many of them walking and growing on the planet through the ages, right? How many dead dinosaurs do you think it takes to make a barrel of oil? One day the black gold will run out. It has to. Simple math. As the wells stop pumping and it gets harder to find new repositories – those underground lakes of raw material - it will not be economically viable to get it out of the Earth and then, for the Average Joe, oil will have effectively run dry.

No. More. Oil.

"Whoop-de-do, what is new?" we ask, and why not? Hasn't this message been barked out by wild-haired environmentalists and green activists smelling of vegetables for the last 30 years? Perhaps even longer. Yet, there are ever greater numbers of Sports Utility Vehicles, gas guzzling cruisers and fume belching trucks rumbling over our roads. It can't be running out. Can it? Same old, same old, right? Even when it does run out, they'll have come up with something else in the mean time, us humans are smart monkeys. Aren't we?

Unfortunately, those conscientious people who care about the environment never seem to get the right message across. Their 'green' ideas seem to translate to higher taxes and restrictions on freedom – they want to make 'us' like them don't they? They talk of holes in the atmosphere, pollution, melting ice-caps. They may want to live in tree-houses and subsist on lentils and root vegetables, but we have mortgages to pay and children to feed, not to mention jobs that we have to hang on to in these economically volatile times. Right? We need our cars and carbon dioxide quotas don't we?

All of the warnings are just noise. The economic machine still has to keep running, doesn't it? Even if there are holes in the atmosphere, people with skin-cancer caused by too much sun-exposure still turn up for work. We struggle on, making ends meet. If the activists had proper jobs, they would know that life has to go on whatever.

We'll, without wanting to sound like a doom-mongerer, those so-called tree-huggers, scroungers, flakes, whatever you want to call them, well, they are about to have the last laugh and guess what, the average Joe in the street is about to be the butt of the biggest joke since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 18th century. Yup, after just over 200 years, the consumer oriented lifestyle is over halfway to becoming extinct, or at least dormant for the foreseeable future.

The problem is, although the warnings about the changing environment may well be noise, the truth is that the economic machine, - 'our' economic machine – runs on oil. Just like your SUV. What happens when it runs out of gas – petroleum refined from oil.? If you're lucky, the next gas-stop is 200 yards down the road, but if there are no more gas-stops, what then?

The Turkey Dinner

Oil is not just a fuel. Obviously, the most visible aspect of oil in our daily lives is petroleum – gas!We visit the gas-stations, fill-up and then feel the price of oil in our pockets as another few cents are periodically added to the price.

You think that is expensive? Have you ever tried to fill-up the tank of a jet-aircraft? They use various forms of Kerosene which, of course, is still refined from oil. Oh, and don't forget the lubricants, Have you ever had to have an engine rebuilt because it seized up? Then there are the plastics, The vast majority of plastic are made from oil so just take a look around and count how many plastic items you can see.

Okay, so the price of oil may rise and they'll want the shirt off your back to pay for it, but if you're wearing synthetics you could be in trouble. For example, Nylon and Polyester are manufactured from oil. Never mind though, just keep smiling through it, as long as you don't expect to use toothpaste to keep your smile white. Yes, many toothpastes contain glycerine which is also derived from oil.

The list of oil-derived products is mind-boggling and even when 'natural' products are used (e.g. wood) you have to consider how they transported the timber from the forests to the sawmill to the manufacturers in order to make the product in the first place. Those timber trucks and trains don't run on tree bark.

Oil is as oil does in our modern society. It fuels and lubricates every aspect of our lives. It keeps us living in the fashion we have become accustomed to over the last 200 odd years. Without it available in large quantities, we end up stuffed more than a well-fed turkey at Thanksgiving.

How much is a large quantity? Well, estimates vary, but you are probably looking at around 20 million barrels a day in the US alone, give or take a million barrels. That is around the same as the next top 4 consumers combined - China, Japan, India and Russia.

"What the heck is a barrel?" you may ask. To make it easier, think of it as 42 US gallons. So, all those barrels equate to around 840 million gallons per day, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the total oil consumption of the entire planet per day. In a year, around 1,000 gallons of oil are consumed for every man woman and child in the US.

That doesn't sound too much actually, does it? Some folks have to commute in and out of the city and easily burn a couple of gallons a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. That is easily 500 gallons there. Yeah, but now consider everyone doing it. Every single citizen of the US. Husbands, wives, children, even retired folks who should be relaxing and playing shuffle-board. Imagine all of them doing that in their own car if you can, all commuting and burning not just 500 gallons per year but twice that amount. That long road of imagination is very busy with over 307 million cars on it and they're using a lot of oil!

If that sounds unreasonable, consider that there were around 254 million passenger vehicles registered in the US in 2007. The bad lands of imagination are in fact a reality.

"I hear you, but so what?"

Did you ever go to get a cup of coffee to then find that you're really low on instant or even beans? You don't want to go out to the store to get more but you've got the rest of the evening to get through. You might manage to get one more cup out of it but you'd probably normally drink three, maybe even four. What do you do?

Well, you could go and get some more, but consider that the store is shut, or that it is raining and cold and you don't feel like going out. Do you take the hit and glug it back? Enjoy that last cup of coffee of the evening and to hell with the rest of it? Or, do you ration it, make smaller cups, enjoy the last of it bit by bit?

We have the same decision with oil, although some of the coffee I have been drinking lately tastes and looks just like oil!

OP Continued ...

OP Continued ...

Uncle Sam Wants You

Your government loves you and would never do anything to hurt you, in fact, it only wants to look after you! Okay, maybe that is debatable, but, you damn well that the any government will want to keep the big wheels of the economy rolling. The banks run the economy and even when it goes belly up, they are bailed out, right? The economic machine has to keep running or the whole kit and kaboodle collapses. We all know that, we just disagree about how it should be done.

Thing is, running out of money is one thing, running out of oil is something else. You can't make up more money to buy it, there isn't any more to actually buy. You can't make it, oil is a primary raw material, we make everything else from it. Ethanol? It takes more oil energy to make ethanol than the energy returned from the ethanol. Not economically viable but good for PR.

So, what is gonna happen? Well, it isn't going to be the 'last full cup of coffee' that some of you went for. No. Let me put it another way... rationing.

Right at this point in time, we are around peak oil production and consumption. It doesn't get any better than 'today'. Production will start to tail off as it becomes harder to find new sources – those underground reservoirs that I mention before. However, consumption will still 'try' to go up. There are developing nations around the world who want to use oil to build their new infrastructure upon. Industry is still trying to expand, growth, growth, growth, right? That is what we are constantly being told?

So, do the math. It has taken around 200 years to reach this point – the pinnacle of oil production. Growth is still being pushed by production will be reducing gradually over the next decades. In fact, you might assume that everything being equal it could last for another 200 years. 'EH-EHHH' as the Global Fortunes buzzer will warn us. With consumption growing or even reducing my a small amount (in the great scheme of things), the remaining oil will last for appreciably less than 200 years.

How long? The average Joe is not allowed to know for sure, you can bet on that, but best guesses would be within 100 years – at the most. Maybe 75 years, maybe even 50 years. Scarily, it may be even sooner. Your children may be just getting into their mid-twenties when cars effectively become obsolete. Unfortunately, it won't just be the cars that become a thing of the past.

Transition

The loss of oil may be termed as a catastrophic event. Not an extinction level event, but certainly something that will change our global society for the rest of time. We will be forced to fundamentally change the way we live. This produces fear – of course it is scary – so I will use the commonly accepted 5 stages of acceptance in summarising what will happen as we go into the future

Denial
Oil will run out? Are you crazy? I don't know, am I? For me to be crazy, a simple fact has to be true – Oil will never run out. Does anybody believe that? Seriously? Okay, maybe oil will run out, but there will be alternatives, we'll come up with something else.

Really? In the 200 years of industrial oil consumption, we have not come up with anything to replace oil. Our technology is based around the consumption of oil. If oil runs out, we have to change the direction of our technology by more than a few degrees. Technology is evolutionary even if some marketing men like to pretend that it is revolutionary. Some evolutionary steps happen very quickly – bam – where did portable MP3 players come from. One minute we had 45's and 33's, then tape cassettes, then CD players, then the tiny MP3 players. They were revolutionary, they just appeared out of nowhere. If I need to explain that, you need to go to a different website to get the details as I cannot be bothered to do it here. That is dismissive, but hey, the truth is out there. Just consider, the internet was 'invented' in the 1960's. It just took a while to catch on and then exploded when the porn industry found it. My little joke(?)

Okay, but we have nuclear energy, solar power, wind turbines? Yeah, how many cars are going to run on that? Are we all going to use electric cars? Do you reallise how much extra energy will be required to charge the batteries of those electric cars? Do you think we have the oil resources to actually build another 254 million electric cars to replace all the petrol driven engines currently registered. All the US car manufacturers together only produce around 3.5 million cars a year. Oil driven cars. That isn't going to get a whole lot higher with oil production on the way down!

OP Continued ...

OP Continued ...

You want evidence that it is happening? You want the cloud of denial to go away? Land-based oil extraction is the simplest form of drilling, give or take. You only bother drilling in deep water because you cannot get to it from land. The reasons may be political, they may be geographical, but once you run out of options to get the oil beneath land, you have to concentrate on the stuff beneath water. Sub-ocean oil extraction is ramping up.

Anger
Why were we not told about this? Why is the government not doing something? How do we get more of the oil that is left? Yadda-Yadda. It is doing something. It is doing it right now, you just have to read the signs. This is where we are at right at the moment. We are in the 'anger' stage. Anger makes us lash out, it makes us act irrationally, both as individuals and as nations. The macro reflects the micro. As above so below (this is a conspiracy website after all). Do I really have to mention Iraq here? 'Oil wars' will ramp up way beyond what we see at the moment. Deals between developing nations will become more obvious. We give you X, Y, Z technology, you cut down your oil consumption and give it to us. If you won't play ball, we'll come and take it rather than ask for it.

Okay, that is a little dramatic and it will ramp up over time, but you get the picture. There will be wide-spread discontent between nations as the race to corner the last oil reserves becomes an international punch-up.

Fear
Fear will affect the population more than the government and international relations, so to speak. It will affect each and every one of us as individuals. As various transitional attempts to reduce oil consumption ramp up, so the 'end of the world' scenarios will be played out on movies and in real-life. Why? Desensitisation!

The Intelligence Services have been playing this game for decades and it is something that ruling bodies have done ever since King Solomon sat on his throne. The Intelligence Services are the secret farmers of public opinion. They do it better than any advertising agency trying to sell you stuff you don't need. They plant a seed of misinformation, that grows into the first shoots of conspiracy gossip which matures into the public domain. However, the farmers do not harvest their own crop, they wait for media reapers to do that work for them. Hollywood, writers, magazine publishers, websites, they take the corn stalks of conspiracy, slather a whole load of butter on it and then serve it up to the general public. The bigger the 'end of the world' scenario the better. Why? Because the end of oil is not the end of the world, but it does represent a new beginning. We all love an uplifting ending and so it is with the end of oil. Trial and tribulation before our heroes and heroines see the sun rise on a brave new world – a a different world admittedly, but at least the sun came up.

We will be desensitised even further, Hollywood will see to that, at the indirect instigation of the Intelligence (Dis)Services. They will try to control the panic that will arise as fuel control is steadily brought in. It starts with financial pressure – taxes, the price of gas, although that is also inevitable. It will ramp up to fuel consumption restrictions, rationing. In the latter stages, it will mean licensed consumption. Only infrastructure providers will be allowed large quantities of oil – transport and distribution. Even that will collapse eventually but it will allow the oil to be squeezed to the last drop,

National infrastructure will largely survive. Nuclear reactors need oil too but not so much that even reduced levels of availability will affect it greatly. Repair and maintenance of national infrastructure will become licensed activities. New efforts to provide low energy recycling will be made to re-use what we normally throw away.

Worst of all, in this heavily controlled future, we will have to be policed. A lot! The black market will thrive, personal freedoms will be constrained, personal oil use will become severely curtailed. The first transport providers to be affected will be the airlines. Forget cheap holidays and air travel, that will rapidly become defunct since airlines operate on such tight margins. Fuel costs and infrastructure maintenance are horrendous within the airline industry. As well as reduce travel opportunities, we will also see more crashes as apparently minor efforts to reduce overheads take their toll on the aircraft.

Over time the population will be disaffected, there will be riots, major public unrest. The height of the fear stage will also bring with it the height of the 'police state'. Any civil unrest that has happened so far will be nothing compared to what happens during this stage.

OP Continued ...

OP Continued ...

Grief
There is nothing we can do! We are doomed! Major economic depression and personal anxiety will peak during this period. There will be a huge rise in 'cults' and sub-cultures that try to become self-sufficient. Think of the Amish but not necessarily with the religious convictions. Some of these groups will come into open confrontation with the government. There could even be civil wars.

The key to survival during this stage is to let go of the old world and to embrace a future that does not rely on oil to drive the fundamental force of existence.

Acceptance
It is difficult to say exactly what life will be like 'on the other side'. The global economy will have collapsed compared to what it was and we will have returned to a much more 'pastoral' existence. Basically, thinking of the early 18th century and you'll have a fair idea of what life will be like. Remember, we were not living in caves back then, some of the greatest cultural advances were achieved during that period. The empires of the old world will probably make a comeback, an extension of the international cooperation/feuding that will need to take place during the latter stages of the anger phase.

Oil will not be completely gone, but it will be a very valuable commodity and used in much the same way as it was before the industrial revolution. How will you travel? Well, let me put it this way, you'd better learn to ride. Yes, horses and carriages will make a comeback. Ships with billowing sails will be making the Atlantic crossing alongside a few very expensive steamers still running on the remnants of fossil fuel (i.e. coal) and the nuclear powered warships of the remaining superpowers. The military-industrial complex will have the major control of oil consumption.

The breakdown will be relatively slow, significantly marked by the collapse of centralised government and general distribution. Forget cheap goods imported en masse from foreign lands. Imports will regain their 'luxury' status in a big way.

It will be strange parallel existence of (imagined) old-world charm and modern technology, but it will be damn hard work and only sustainable with a few caveats in mind. Unlike a Hollywood movie, I've saved the worst bit to the end. Although the sun will continue to rise on a vastly different world civilisation, it will come at a great cost. Put simply, the population will be reduced by billions.

At the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1800, the world population was around 1 billion people (1,000 million!). By 2020 it has been estimated to reach around 8 billion people. Horribly, that figure is not achievable without oil. You cannot produce enough food and distribute it to so many people without the aid of oil and the highly mechanised farming and distribution methods which we currently use cannot be supported indefinitely. Think how we used to farm 200 years ago. That is what we will have to return to. Hard graft I am afraid.

Even a conservative estimate would indicate a necessary world reduction in population by around 5 billion people. A small part of this will be achieved through natural life expectancy and a declining birth-rate, however, we cannot ignore the fact that millions will die from starvation and from the effects of warfare during the latter stages of the anger phase. The free and easy borders of the past will become much more difficult to cross and whole continents will become 'resource pools' for the nations that maintain military superiority.

Foreign aid will have reduced to a bare minimum and not necessarily provided on humanitarian grounds. The West simply won't have the resources to give/trade with developing countries. Some countries currently struggling to develop in the modern world will become 'tribal' wastelands with their populations decimated. Think of the British Empire and its domination of world trade in a world of sail ships. That is what the US will need to become to survive.

It won't be an 'apocalyptic' world, but it will be very different from what we have today.

What do you do?

Start learning to be as self-sufficient as possible. Grow your own vegetables. Create communities that offer the local 'market' mentality we associate with the isolated towns and outposts of the past. The pioneer days! In fact, as crazy as it sounds right now, take a look at Amish lifestyles as a demonstration of what can be achieved without heavy reliance on refined oil.

"This is nuts!" you may be thinking as you read this, but it will certainly be necessary for your children's children and a way of life for theirs. You need to act now so that they have the knowledge and land at hand as they grow up.

OP Continued ...

OP Continued ...

In summary

As for me, I am doing anything. Of course not! I'm young, free and single and I don't usually think about but one weekend ahead. However, that said, I am aware of it and gradually it will dawn on me that the lip-service I pay to it will one day have to be a reality, especially if I have children at some point. I'm a nobody, just like all the billions of nobodies across the globe who will be affected by this. It is coming. I'm no authority but I can say what I see in front of my face. If you want better information, go get it, there are numerous sites dedicated to this subject and some of the best information can be obtained straight from government statistics and oil company reports. They may try to obfuscate the truth, but they know they can't hide it for much longer.

For sure, check out the documentary with Michael Ruppert called 'Collapse'. He has been banging on about this for years but nobody is listening. I won't post a link because you should buy/rent it – the poor guy has trouble paying his bills so he deserves some support!

For my own part, I will try and do some longer posts/threads on the specifics of the points I have raised here, the signs of the 5 stages, statistics to calculate how long this process will take, alternative forms of energy for the future.

I will also be doing a piece on my biggest fascination (even with doom heading at full tilt towards us) and that is government disinformation and the way the media is being controlled right now. Not everything you understand, but just in respect of this theme.

Hope you enjoyed this and take it seriously. I've tried to be light-hearted but it is still a reality.

This is going to happen!

OP End ...

I've read that Saudi Arabia has hit peak awhile ago, and since they are the biggest producers of oil, that means that the world has already reached peak oil. Some people disagree with that notion, saying that they are just pulling our chain so they can inflate the price. Could be true, but the thing is, oil will never go back to the price it was before. If all the sudden the price collapsed, a lot of people would be fuming mad, because WOULD point out to the manipulation of the price of oil, and they will never let on to that, as long as it's regulated like it is.

you wrote out the entire documentary, Collapse. hell yeah. good stuff.

reply to post by RawkMan


Depending where you get your info,
Peak oil is to happen between 2010 - 2015 , thats for the globe.

The US passed peak in the 70's, Norway is past peak.

Canada and Venezula , have a Huge Inventory of oil, but is very expensive to extract, and those deposits are already worked into the Global Peak est.

Im thinking a Bicycle Shop might be a good business to start.

I think this could have been said in a couple of sentences. Is there anything new that you can present? Maybe a link or two of something interesting?

We haven't hit peak oil. There is alot of oil left. Much of it offshore, lots in arctic ocean which is becoming increasingly accessible, and Canadian oil sands haven't even scratched the surface so to speak.

The problem is we are over peak usage. We use a ton of the stuff. Human demand has outstripped production. As fuel efficient as we make things we continue to use more and more.

Most of the things we buy that are made from oil we can do without anyways. Plastic bottles, synthetic clothing, most electronics (I happen to enjoy a few but in moderation). If we used oil for fuel only we would be alot better off and I honestly believe it would fix the economy while we are at it.

Basically we used oil for everything because it was plentiful and cheap. Now that its becoming harder to obtain and used in just about every product imaginable we dump a ton of financial interests in to obtaining it. Money that is being drawn away from other industries. For example if we were to stop using synthetic clothing and went back to using natural fibers (which is entirely possible) it would literally create thousands of jobs. It requires more manpower to collect and manufacture than oil. It requires more farms since clothing fibers come from farm animals and crops. Basically it would still take resources but instead of one that depletes and pollutes you are using one that is replenishable and pollutes far less. Plus the extra jobs. Might make your clothing cost more but they will last much longer and it would make oil slightly cheaper because there would be more supply to be able to use for fuel.

Its this instant gratification and cheap goods mentality in society that has driven the demand for oil. Say the oil companies are evil all you'd like, it is our choices in society that has lead to this. We wanted these products.

reply to post by RawkMan


Or it could all be wrong?

Ever heard of abiotic oil??

The abiotic oil formation theory suggests that crude oil is the result of naturally occurring and possibly ongoing geological processes. This theory was developed in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as the Union needed to be self sufficient in terms of producing its own energy. The science behind the theory is sound and is based on experimental evidence in both the laboratory and in the field. This theory has helped to identify and therefore develop large numbers of gas and oil deposits. Examples of such fields are the South Khylchuyu field and the controversial Sakhalin II field.

reply to post by ArcAngel


Oil is going to run out. You will live a life much like the late 18th century...

Two sentences. Says it all. However, I wanted to provide a wider based of conversation that touch on the stages of collapse. Yes, we all know the basic premise but have we reached a common consensus on where we are in those stages?

People are spending their lives chasing little grey men and ignoring the fact that the world as we know it really will end much sooner than people think. I grew up with a grandfather born in 1901 and he lived to the ripe old age of 92. These changes will be seen within 3 generations.

Pretty big news I would have said, so I think it deserved more than 2 sentences of my time.

Maybe I can refer you to the 'denial' stage and possibly the government disinformation posts that I intend to do. Posts that dismiss the issue work to the benefit of both things.

Thanks for your time though...

Crude oil is a naturally occurring compound. As carbon binds with Hydrogen in the depths of our crust, it binds with Hydrogen forming Methane. As it effervesces towards the surface, it picks up additional Carbon and Hydrogen atoms making Ethane and then Propane. Slowly, these compounds evolve into the crude oil that we drill for at shallow to incredible depths. Contrary to TPTB, we will never run out of oil.

while i agree oil is past its peak more or less their are other options :coal,hemp oil(some day)lumber (also finite resource) tar sands and whatever that fracking stuff is all about not to mention that eventually technology will come up with new options and technologys and who knows we could always get lucky and have some kind of space breakthrough where we could go get recources from the asteroid belt or other stellar bodies but if we dont come up with an alternative we might just be screwed

reply to post by Violater1


Yes, I am aware of some of the theories describing 'naturally occurring' crude oil. However, as your post mentions, this occurs slowly over time. The fact is, it is only over the last 200 years that we have been heavily producing and consuming oil. The large repositories that have built up over time (say, 4.5 billion years as the age of the Earth) have done so very slowly but have been harvested at a very high rate.

Even in the scenario where oil continues to be produced, we have cleared the buffers so to speak and may only be able to extract the oil at basically the same rate as it is produced - which is nothing compared to global consumption. Even in the scenario of naturally occurring oil (rather than as a 'fossil fuel' as readily understood) we are still stuffed because it is created so slowly.

Bottom line is our society has become so big we need to figure out a way to obtain resources offworld. In fact we have started doing this the second we figured out a way to leave the planet. That milestone in itself is a perfect example of why we should have been doing it right away. It demonstrates the need to seek out new resources. Not unlike how we have waged war over countless millenia in order to gain resources from those who had plenty. Land acquisition meant more resource.

The United States oil reserves in the Green River Formation is over 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. This is larger than Saudi Arabia's reserves. Now it is not as cheap to extract as theirs, but regardless it is there. This oil could last us over 400 years.

Look at the technological advances we made in the last 100 years. What will we accomplish in the next 100 or 200 or 300 or 400 years! Maybe we will figure out cheaper and safer ways to extract it.

Sorry this is just another sky is falling thread. The oil is there and we have plenty of time to work on better ways to power the planet! We just need to work harder at it. One good idea, who has it!

ostseis.anl.gov...

That was a pretty good read, Rawk.

While public information on actually oil supplies varies from nation to nation...
We may never know how much is left, or how much is to be found.

But I will say this:
People (most NOT ALL) today live as if there is no repercussions to their actions.
They teach their offspring to do the same, day in and out.
We all live as though oil is everlasting, when in reality we shouldn't.
People live thinking, "It won't happen in my lifetime..."
But really, they should think "Nothing on this Earth is forever."
It would give them a sense of conservation.
Instead of being so wasteful.

But we take that for granted each and every day.
All the examples you gave are great, and can be added to.

It's hard to try and ween off of something we are so used to.
Especially when generations are raised on it.
You're absolutely right, this world is dependant on it.



It will be the hardest challenge of this species to overcome.

Bottom line is our society has become so big we need to figure out a way to obtain resources offworld

If our society wasn't completely retarded we would decrease our population to make sure we maintain our quality of life. But we are retarded unfortunately.

I don't agree with running out of oil. There is plenty of oil out there, and without any knowledge of how it forms, there could be a lot more.

On the other hand; I do agree that we ran out of CHEAP oil. Cheap oil which is required to covert off shore and Arctic oil into usable energy.

But than again; I invested in these guys... so I win either way.

www.africaoilcorp.com...