Marvin Gregory
The United States is running out of oil, which is serious enough, but we also face the prospect of the world’s oil reaching a peak in production in a very few years and thereafter going into permanent decline. To put it shortly: we are approaching a sea change in the cost and availability of oil, and that change will affect our lives and the life of everyone on the planet.
I belong to two energy e-mail lists with a total of about 800 members. We have some pretty bright people on both lists, Ph.Ds, Masters in computer technology, and the like and there is pretty fair agreement among us that our energy situation is in bad shape and we, and the world, are headed for perilous times.
The United States started out with some 215 billion barrels of oil and now we are down to about 40 billion. (By comparison, Saudi Arabia started out with 370 billion barrels and still has 300 billion remaining.) To keep all of our cars, planes, trucks, locomotives, ships, motorcycles, factories and whathaveyou running, we consume 20 MILLION barrels of oil each day. We are forced to import 60 percent or 12 million barrels of that total and the other 40 percent comes from our own wells. We have used so much of our reserves that we are on the downhill slope of domestic supply. In another ten years we will be forced to import 70 percent of our supply, and ten years after that, 80 percent.
The reason we are running out of oil is that we started using and exporting oil in a big way in the early years of the century and never let up. World War II was fought largely on our oil with both the Germans and the Japanese being undone by running out of oil. We were exporting large quantities of oil even into the 1950s. President Eisenhower, for example, used the dependence of European nations upon our exported oil as part of his leverage to end the Suez Crisis in 1956.
Presently, there’s little more oil to be discovered either in the lower 48 states, Alaska or the continental shelf surrounding those regions. Our 215 billion barrel total supply, based upon a Hubbert Curve, includes an estimate of some 7 to 8 billion barrels yet to be discovered. The U.S. has been so thoroughly explored, drilled, and gone over by modern technical means that one can say quite confidently that aside from producing wells, we have very little oil remaining. We have yet to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve and there are some attractive areas off the California coast, but in both cases, we know some oil is there.
Running out of oil places us in a nasty predicament. We are at the mercy of whichever way the oil wind blows because we have no reserves to fall back on. In addition, our consumption of oil is so huge and that huge amount so necessary to keep our economy running that a day of reckoning always seems just around the corner. Part of the problem is that we use (with our production added in) an incredible 25 percent of the world’s total oil production.
To compound this difficulty, the world as a whole is fast approaching a peak in world oil production. Most members of the energy lists and experts writing on the subject expect the peak to occur sometime between now and the end of the decade, between 2002 and 2010, with 2006 and 2007 being the most likely target dates. The world’s original oil endowment is estimated at about 2100 billion barrels. The peak will therefore occur when 1050 billion have been consumed—which is about where we are now.
The significance of world oil peaking is that demand will continue to rise even as production declines. (China and India are stepping into the market in a big way.) This will translate into a price rise the world over and with time, some shortages. Although mountains and mountains of oil will remain, the lid will have come off the normal supply and demand equation and consuming nations will be forced to bid against each other for the remaining supply.
Here in the U.S. the problem we face is that no preparation at all has been made for this transition almost upon us. We will face a terrible wrenching change in our lives in the very near future and since the world is dependent upon the same cheap energy supply, the world will undergo a similar wrenching experience. We may be looking at an economic depression going on for a number of years as we struggle to accommodate to a new reality. The world, much poorer than we, will most likely have an even worse time of it. The Green Revolution has been based upon new and better plant species which require larger amounts of petroleum-based fertilizer and pesticides, ample machine driven irrigation, farm machinery and transportation. Now, as one writer put it, we are going to see the Green Revolution run in reverse. No one knows exactly what will happen, but the most likely scenario is that the world’s population will continue its climb to a final peak, followed by starvation as North Korea now experiencing, then followed by a decimation through disease of the weakened and vulnerable survivors.
From my experience and from what other list members have said, three questions usually come up after this energy presentation and the difficulties ahead are made:
How much will this cost me at the pump?
(1) Four to five dollars per gallon.
Can’t we make an easy transition to other fuels and energy systems?
(2) There’s a catch in the use of most other fuels. Hydrogen, for example, is usually made from natural gas which, like oil is starting to run out, and it must be compressed down for storage and then transferred to a car in the same compressed state. We don’t even have a beginning on such an infrastructure. Alcohol requires an exorbitant amount of oil invested in the growing, transport, and processing of crops in order to be feasible as a fuel. You might as well put the oil, in the form of gasoline, right in your tank. Coal to gasoline (as the Germans and the South Africans did) is a messy process, as is the extraction of oil from tar sands or a near-oil from oil shale. And as we learned in California last year, we don’t have any great surplus of electricity to use to power little electric cars or use as an energy substitute in other ways. Wind and nuclear power, to make more electricity seems the most sensible route to follow at this time, with solar power running a close third. The bottom line is that nothing compares with oil. Oil, a naturally occurring liquid, can’t be matched for its explosive power and ease of use. And, so far it has been very difficult to come up with a substitute.
And won’t THEY do something?
(3) No, THEY won’t do anything because THEY are oblivious to the problem, too. THEY will issue ration books, however. I believe THEY still have them in storage from the 1974 Energy Crisis.
The Oil Depletion Resource Page
The Imminent Peak of World Oil Production by C.J. Campbell; 1999
Jay Hanson’s Website: The Paul Revere of the Fossil Fuel Energy Crisis
Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage by Kenneth Deffeyes; 2001
GeoDestinies: The Inevitable Control Of Earth Resources Over Nations And Individuals by Walter Youngquist; 1997