In fact, there are trillions of potential barrels of oil in Mother Nature’s pressure cooker as we speak, but it will likely take thousands of years before they become oil reservoirs like those we are accustomed to drilling today. It is much more likely, however, that we will reach the economic limits of extracting oil from the ground before we reach the physical limits. In fact, looking at the historical trend of the world’s reserve-to-production ratio since 1980, we are actually at one of our most abundant times in terms of proved reserves.
As these sweet spots get exhausted over time, producers need to tap harder to access reserves, which cost more to develop. Though the U.S. became the top oil producer in 2018, our proven reserves didn’t crack the top five. Though the U.S. became the top oil producer in 2018, our proven reserves didn’t crack the top five. The fossilized organic compounds of ancient life on Earth sure do provide us with a handy way to get around.
The main reason for “being so wrong” about oil’s future availability is the over-reliance on analytical techniques that fail to appreciate petroleum as an economic commodity powered by the constant advance of technology. Many predictions fall short because they too simplistically center on reserve years or the proved recoverable reserves divided by the annual consumption rate. Proved reserves grow over time, however, and estimates of the recoverable resource change as new information is acquired through drilling, production, and technological and managerial development. Another factor that affects perception is that oil companies adopt short- to mid-term planning horizons. Exploration is costly, so there is no economic incentive to look for resources that will not be needed for decades down the road. Globally, crude’s reserves-to-production ratio has hovered between years.
These same plant-based chemicals could also be used in other areas where petrochemicals are currently vital, like making plastics, etc. While primarily created as a substitute for plastic, spandex, and synthetic polymers, similar chemicals could be modified to supply the medical industry. With more widespread interest and development, using living plants and bacteria (rather than the remains of their long-dead ancestors) is a promising avenue to explore. The truth is that making and mass-producing pharmaceuticals and medical devices would be complicated without petrochemicals, especially at the scale required to meet global demand. Let’s look at the current development of oil substitutes in various industries. While gold and silver are consumed in equipment like electronics (despite being considered “precious”) this is because they are excellent electrical conductors when compared to cheaper alternatives.
It can also be used “as is” as a binder for many other things like asphalt, roofing products, damp-proofing, etc. As oil becomes harder and harder to extract, and while demand remains high for oil, improved and innovative methods to extract oil are bound to be investigated and mastered. For example, directional drilling, or the ability to direct a boring head subsurface, was once thought too challenging to make economically viable but is now pretty much standard practice.
This week the IEA, International Energy Agency, released ‘Oil 2018’ its 5 year market analysis and forecast. The report notes that “over the next 3 years, gains from the US alone will cover 80% of the world’s demand growth.” It projects a growth by another million barrels per day from 2017 levels by 2022. The base case projects growth of around 3 million barrels per day over the next 5 years.
Estimating the remaining oil reserves of the planet is notoriously difficult, and frankly, subject to constant change. The reasons for this vary but are primarily dictated by our technological ability to exploit oil reserves in the first place and also the difficulty of estimating future demand. Crude oil is one of the most important resources we have ever discovered.
When I was young and in elementary school in the 1980’s, I learned the world had 50 years of oil left. Then, in college in the 1990’s, I found out we still had 50 years of oil left. In the 2000’s, reports came out that we have 50 years of oil left in the world supplies. In 2050, I suspect that the world will have approximately 50 years of oil supplies remaining.
For many years he appeared to be correct, but the “shale revolution” is on the verge of proving him premature. Global consumption of fossil fuels is rising by more than one per cent each year, according to experts. It’s a common conception that a finite resource might be depleted until it’s all gone.
As such, the cost of extracting the oil in Venezuela’s reserves using the technology currently available is too high to be profitable. Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves, on the other hand, are close to the surface and on land, which makes the oil much more accessible and the extraction process vastly more cost-effective. This, in turn, makes Saudi Arabia’s oil sector significantly more profitable. The vast majority of fossil fuel reserves owned today by countries and companies must remain in the ground if the climate crisis is to be ended, an analysis has found.
The production of food, materials, clothes and drugs would also eventually cease as oil and other fossil fuels are vital for the production of electricity. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day, so 800 billion barrels would last for more than 400 years if oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand. A sudden loss of oil supplies would make it impossible to meet world energy needs. Countries have very varying stocks of natural gas which they could tap, and Johansen says such resources would be quickly depleted.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, though, because these projections don’t include technically recoverable resources that are not yet deemed economical at today’s prices. Considering all of the technically recoverable resources, we have enough oil to last us over 100 years at current production levels. Furthermore, if we also include more complicated oil reservoirs such as kerogen deposits, then we may have more than 250 years of oil supply.
Increasing power generation was responsible for a little more than half of the growth in primary energy demand. For example, some estimates include only conventional oil resources, whilst other estimates include both conventional oil resources and unconventional oil resources . In addition to conventional resources and reserves, there’s also oil in unconventional oil resources. “According to current estimates, more than 80% of the world’s proven oil reserves are located in OPEC Member Countries, with the bulk of OPEC oil reserves in the Middle East, amounting to around 66% of the OPEC total.” According to the International Energy Agency , in 2020 the world consumed a total of 101.7 million barrels of oil per day.
For reference, a barrel of crude oil is about 42 gallons or about 159 liters. For most of the time that humans have been able to extract and refine it, gold has mostly been used as jewelry or as a means of exchange. With the advent of the electronics age, however, gold was found to also be a fantastic electrical conductor. The discovery how much oil left in the world and exploitation of crude oil have literally transformed the world beyond all recognition. A novel technology to be explored in view of that the world has only 60% of water it needs is the cogeneration of nuclear energy with desalination where the heat of the water cooling the reactor is used for high pressure desalination.
However, from a practical point of view, we will likely reach a point where all the available oil reserves are effectively depleted. By way of comparison, the amount of technically recoverable oil was around 143.5 billion barrels in 1990. According to some estimates, there are “trillions” of barrels of shale oil in the U.S. alone. However, the actual energy return on energy invested to extract and refine shale oil is so poor that there has been no serious commercial exploitation of oil shale to date. It is so sticky that the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers often compares it to “cold molasses”.
The International Energy Agency says that oil demand recovery will be slower in 2021 than previously thought. Reducing its projections by 170,000 barrels per day , the Paris based agency estimates that oil demand will be 5.7 mbpd in 2021. Climate policies in at least 170 countries now consider adaptation, but in many nations, these efforts have yet to progress from planning to implementation.
Or, in another example, officials can couple policy interventions dedicated to expanding access to public transit with interventions to improve access to nearby, affordable housing. Ecosystem-based adaptation measures like restoration can be low-cost ways to help communities adapt and protect biodiversity. Climate change — as well as our collective efforts to adapt to and mitigate it — will exacerbate inequity should we fail to ensure a just transition.
For this reason, some feel that the best way is to allow the billions of people on the planet to make incremental changes over time to wean us all off the need to consume oil. Others argue that unless changes are imposed, they will never happen. At this point, oil prices will have risen high enough to make its use uneconomical for most purposes. After all, this is what we really mean when we say “run out” — if it costs $10,000 to fill the tank, or $100 per plastic bag, for almost everyone, that is effectively the same as not having any oil. That is unless, of course, some new mega resource of the stuff is found.
Middle Eastern states have more than half the world oil reserves but will need to keep almost two-thirds in the ground, while 83% of Canada’s oil from tar sands must not be extracted. The scientific study is the first such assessment and lays bare the huge disconnect between the Paris agreement’s climate goals and the expansion plans of the fossil fuel industry. It’s worth noting that estimates for the number of years worth of any fossil fuel left are not definitive. At the same time, efforts to mitigate climate change also risk disruptive changes and exacerbating inequity.
If we keep burning fossil fuels at our current rate, it is generally estimated that all our fossil fuels will be depleted by 2060. The world has proven reserves equivalent to 52.3 times its annual consumption. Oil has various uses once extracted, but the vast majority is distilled to make liquid fuels like gasoline or is used to make plastic or chemicals. So long as societies around the world maintain their demand for fuel, plastic, and other stuff made, in part, from crude oil, an estimate of 47 years is probably quite conservative. An online search for ‘new ways to produce oil’ also outlines several new technologies, drilling methods, and other processes that may allow new oil resources to be accessed, or extracted at a specific price.
By 2021, consumption is expected to rise to 102.4 million barrels per day. In terms of production, the IEA estimates that the world will produce a total of 98.9 million barrels per day in 2020, and 99.6 million barrels per day in 2021. “The bleak picture painted by our scenarios for the global fossil fuel industry is very likely an underestimate of what is required,” the researchers said. This is because the carbon budget used only gives a 50% chance of 1.5C and because the scientists assumed a significant level of CO2 removal from the atmosphere using technology that is yet to be proven at scale. Did some geological miracle more than double the amount of oil we have produced in the past three-plus decades? It’s more of a disconnect between how much oil is physically left in the world and how data related to oil reserves is reported.
In 2020, the world used approximately 88.6 million barrels per day of oil, which amounted to 30.1% of the world’s primary energy. Crude oil creates gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, asphalt, tar, and lubrication oils. “Oil reserves” is an estimate of the amount of not-yet-mined crude oil located in a particular country that can be recovered with current technology and at a cost that is financially feasible in relation to the current price of oil. This is a list of countries by oil production (i.e., petroleum production), as compiled from the U.S. Energy Information Administration database for calendar year 2021, tabulating all countries on a comparable best-estimate basis.