There's a whole lot more oil in the ground than most people realize. Vasko Kohlmayer has posted a fascinating article. Here's an excerpt, but there's a whole lot more besides:
A recent survey on the environment found that seventy percent of people worldwide think that the planet is running out oil. Only less than one quarter believe that there is enough of it to keep it as a primary source of energy. Petro pessimism runs especially high in the United States where a full two thirds think that the point of depletion is within sight.
Here are some hard facts.
According the Energy Information Administration as of January 2007 there was more than 1.3 trillion barrels of proved crude oil on earth. Even if this were all the oil on the planet there would be no immediate danger of shortages, because at the current rate of consumption – roughly 85 million barrels a day – this supply would last for more than 40 years.
But the 1.3 trillion in these so-called proved reserves refers only to a tiny fraction of earth’s oil, designating only that portion which can be extracted under current ‘economic and operating conditions.’ As it happens, this figure grows with each decade and usually dramatically so. . .
. . . All this should make one thing amply clear – there is enough oil to go around for a very long time. Even on conservative assumptions – accelerating consumption and few new discoveries – earth’s oil supplies should last for at least a century.
This, however, is the worst case scenario. We can be reasonably certain that new exploration and advancing technologies will in coming years greatly add to the quantities of available oil. So much so that Morris Adelman, Professor Emeritus in Economics at Harvard, has argued that the ‘amount of oil available to the market over the next 25 to 50 years is for all intents and purposes infinite.’
The notion that this planet is running out of oil is one of the great misnomers of our age. There is more oil available today than there was a hundred, fifty or ten years ago. And there is every indication that this trend will continue into the future. Instead of lamenting that we are running out of it, it would be far more accurate to say that we are constantly bumping into new oil. This is why two years ago the Economist headlined an article on the topic The Bottomless Beer Mug.
The general public, however, is largely ignorant of these facts. The divergence between the conventional wisdom and reality could hardly be any wider. Profoundly misinformed and alarmed, people place false hopes in misguided alternatives. Rather than implementing harmful, inefficient and expensive substitutes, we should insist that our government lift the obstacles which prevent us from availing ourselves of this superabundant resource. (more . . .)