Question: What happens when it's all gone?
The perception that oil supply cannot keep up with demand has fuelled another jump in prices around the world.
- "oil supply 'cannot match demand'"; bbc online; wednesday, may 12, 2004.
This reminded me of a bunch of other things I've read on the subject that scare the hell out of me when I think on them too much. If anyone knows of any dependable sources that will tell me otherwise, please pass them on.
Optimists see at least several decades more of unfettered world oil production--but a growing number of realists conclude that world oil production is nearing its all-time peak, perhaps within 10 years. The optimists, mostly economists, believe that new oil discoveries and enhanced recovery from old fields will delay the world peak beyond 2040. The opposition, mostly geologists, argue otherwise.
- "the world petroleum life-cycle"; richard c. duncan & walter youngquist; paper presented at the petroleum technology tranfer council workshop 'opec oil pricing and independent oil producers'; october 22, 1998
It gets better.
Oil "production" (i.e., extraction) peaked in North America in 1984. Several recent studies project world oil production to peak by 2013 or sooner, possibly as soon as 2007. Even the necessarily conservative International Energy Agency in its World Energy Outlook, 1998 concurred for the first time that global output could top out between 2009 and 2012 and decline rapidly thereafter. IEA data project a nearly 20-per-cent shortfall of supply relative to demand by 2020 that will have to be made up of from "unidentified unconventional" sources (i.e., known oil-sands deposits have already been taken into account). Other studies show that by 2040 total oil output from all sources may fall to less than half of today's 25-26 billion barrels of oil per year.
- "there's no fuel like an old fuel"; william rees; globe and mail; wednesday, march 29, 2000
Rees, an ecological economist and professor in UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning, coined the term 'ecological footprint' and gave a talk on it and on the peak of oil extraction at War Memorial Hall two years ago.
This is what Rees said four years ago about substitutes in the article I quoted above (and two years ago he was saying much the same thing, but with more technical detail):
The fact is that no suitable substitutes are yet in sight for the fossil fuels used in heavy farm machinery, construction and mining equipment, diesel trains and trucks, and ocean-going freighters. Jet aircraft cannot be powered by electricity, whatever its source. It is also no small irony that we need high-intensity fossil fuel to produce the machinery and infrastructure required for most alternative forms of energy. Sunlight is simply too "dilute" to use in manufacturing the high-tech devices and equipment required for its own conversion to heat and electricity. Industrial civilization faces a paradox: we need oil to move beyond the age of oil.
- "there's no fuel like an old fuel"; william rees; globe and mail; wednesday, march 29, 2000
I could find more, but I think you get my drift. Long-term, good for the planet (maybe). But what concerns me is what life will be like for those of us who get to live through it. If Rees et al. are correct.
