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I seem to remember a few years ago it was popular for various doom and gloom merchants to predict that oil would run out in 20, 30, 40 years or so. What's the current estimate? I heard one chap on the radio the other day saying that there was 'plenty of oil around'. Is there?
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cabsmanuk
for many years we have been "discovering"(1) new oil fields at around the same rate as consumption, so the ratio of reserves to consumption defined in years has remained static.
(1) discovering includes developing oil field extraction technologies which make existing known reserves economical to recover.
However we are now in a situation where consumption is exceeding "discoveries", I forget the exact figure at the moment but its standing around 30 years maybe dipping below that into the 20odd region, but willing to be corrected on that.
The intense focus at the moment is on synfuel, or GTL. By this I mean the ability to convert natural gas to synthetic liquid fuel, basically diesel. This syn-fuel will burn far better than diesel from mineral oil.
The techniques to do this generally exist and have done so for many years, eg Fischer Tropf process, which of course was developed by the n***s to refine liquid fuel from coal, not to dissimilar a concept.
However some new materials need to be invented to make the process more effective. These developments are in hand and top priority.
Before anyone says "but natural gas reserves are even more limited" please don't forget frozen methane hydrates. That however is another issue and probably not for a motoring site.
hope that answers your question and considered not too far off topic.
FiF
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Fif
Excellent answer. I too have heard that discoveries (in the widest sense) are now not matching usage. However, the economic factors which deter 'discoveries' in the more difficult regions until the value of the product makes the exploitation costs viable are particularly significant. Therefore as oil values rise, other sources become viable, and it will be interesting to see how this affects supplies, whether these are natural or synthetic.
It won't happen for ever, of course, but there are probably significant natural sources remaining which are still to be commercially acceptable. As an example, there are immense reserves in the Canadian tar sands, which are currently uneconomic to exploit.
Considering the current predictions of 20/30 years, it seems likely that any business would consider this to be a sufficient horizon. It's unlikely any oil company would spend too much money extending their business horizon from, say, 20 to 30 years, and this may well be a factor in the constancy of this figure.
Regards
John S
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"... plenty of oil around. Is there?"
Well, yes and no. As has been indicated above, the reason estimates vary is that they are made based on contemporary knowledge of usable supplies. New oil fields are discovered fairly frequently. As John S says, there's also the fact that certain oil fields now being tapped may have been impossible/unviable to exploit say 20 years ago, due to technological limitations and/or the cost of extracting the oil. As far as I am aware, the most optimistic estimate for the world to reach peak oil production (that's peak production, not end of supplies) is around 2020. The most pessimistic estimate that I've heard is much earlier, as early as 2011. After peak production is reached, the cost of extracting oil can only rise, taking the price at the pumps with it. Expect more oil wars!
This is a large part of the reason why there has been a much more significant development of alternatively fuelled and ultra efficient engines by so many of the major car companies recently. Unfortunately there is no real consensus on what the future of fuelling will be. Electric cars? Fuel cells? Gas? Biofuels? Synthetics? Hybrids? To be successful, it will have to be simple enough to appeal to consumers.
My guess is that the hybrid combustion/electric motor using either biofuel, gas, or synthetic fuel with regenerative braking for recharging batteries, will be one of the more likely successes. Plus hydrogen IF those involved work out how to produce hydrogen in a way that doesn't cost more energy in the first place. This will probably mean investing in a lot more wind farms, wave power, solar, etc. Unfortunately, it may also see a further proliferation of nuclear power stations if governments and business continue to display the usual lack of foresight.
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