End of Oil and Gas
How Much Oil and Natural Gas is Left?
At 2003 consumption levels [2], the remaining reserves represent 44.6 years of oil and 66.2 years of natural gas. Does this mean that the world will be out of fossil fuels in 50 years or so? That theory has been around since the 1970s. In fact, the figures for years of remaining reserves have remained relative constant over the past few decades as the industry has replaced consumption with newly discovered oil and gas deposits and has developed technologies to increase the amount of oil and gas that can be recovered from existing reservoirs.
Will we run out of oil in 44.6 years? Probably not, but I think ~100 years is a better estimate depending on conservation and new oil and gas discoveries. I think that at most there is 20% of current known reserves left in the earth to discover, which means we have 53.5 years of oil and gas left.
The energy information administration part of the department of energy estimate the global reserves to be between 1.188 and 1.292 trillion barrels of Oil.
Iraq has an estimated of 115 billion barrels of Oil left. At our current consumption rates this would last the United States for 15 years but would only satisfy the world consumption for 1.3 years. {International Energy Outlook ‘06} Not very much in either case.
The amount that we have now is a trillion barrels of oil. So people in the industry might say, we have a trillion barrels just sitting there waiting to be pumped out of the ground; we’re using it up at a rate of about 25 billion barrels a year, and so we have 40 more years to go
David Goodstein’s book Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil is a good book to read if you want to learn more about the most important dilemma of the 21st century. He is a professor at Caltec. The link goes to a PR article written by Caltec about his book with what I think are excerpts from it.
So how is running out of Gas going to affect us? Here is what oilcrash.com thinks will happen.
- Gradual, permanent cut-off of fuel for transport and for industrial machinery. Global trade will greatly decline.
- Agriculture (food production) depends heavily on fertilizers and chemicals made from oil.
- Shortages of 500,000 other goods made from oil.
- Therefore, reduction of virtually all business and government activity.
If we fail completely to find a solution to replacing oil and gas than it will get really bad. If we do find a solution but it turns out to be non-sustainable in the long run than it will get really bad. Against all odds we must find something that we can rely on indefinately if we have a hope of not returning to a completely Agrarian society.
Our wold population is heavily depandant on our ability to feed everyone, which is heavily depandant on oil and gas machinery to farm all that food. So what advice can you give to your kids who are born?
#1. Move out of the city! Sometime in the next couple of decades, civil authority in large US cities will simply disintegrate. And when authority goes, we know exactly what’s going to happen.
Remember the Rodney King rebellion? All that old class hatred and jealousy comes boiling to the surface. It’s really going to be ugly — you don’t want to be there!
Go somewhere where the climate is warm, with plenty of rain (just don’t come here to the Kona Coast.) I don’t think “ethnic cleansing” will be a big problem except in the cities (at least, not to start with).
#2. Prepare yourself to survive without municipal power, water, or sewer services. You won’t have to live without hookups initially, but you will be forced to do without them sometime in the next few decades.
Most of the country’s groundwater is already contaminated, and once sewage systems and dumps are abandoned, it will ALL become contaminated. Without power to pump or chlorine to disinfect groundwater, you really have no option except to rely on rain catchment for drinking water.
#3. In order to survive, you are going to need a large garden. An oversized garden would allow you to exchange your extra produce to your neighbors for hard goods — like ammunition.
#4. Remember that you will not be able to rely on complex technology, because once supply lines break down, you won’t be able to get spares. So limit yourself to technology that you can fix with a hammer and forge. (If you don’t know what a “forge” is, go see an old cowboy movie.)
-Logan Lindquist