Forums / Miscellaneous Discussions / Peak Oil

World oil supply is going down as cheap easy to extract oil is running out around the world. Oil prices rise as supply decreases. What do you guys/girls think will happen in the future? After US secures Iraqi oil supplies what will they do when that runs out? What will we use to substitute for oil when it gets too expensive to be used to make plastics, fertilizers, pesticides and as an energy source?

booyaa USA

Build the smoke stacks high enough, and it will all go to Europe. USA has enough coal for centuries. They have the largest reserves in the world.

Oh, and coal can be converted to oil.

or using brain power (like yours) to fuel our energy!

I read some where about an interview with the Exxon-Mobile's CEO or whichever oil company... He talked about the world's oil supply.. He said there are 2 or 3 Trillion tonnes left and the total mankind consumption of oil is 1 Trillion.

Nuclear has amazing untapped potential.. everyone complains about the "waste" and says it can be radioactive for millions of years. Well, unsurprisingly to those who think about it for a second, it turns out that the radioactive "waste" can be reprocessed and used to generate even more power. Some estimates have the untapped energy enough for millions of years of current worldwide consumption.

What the SEO neglected to mention was that a huge portion of that is in forms of oil we are just figuring out how to tap.

Ethanol is really a waste of time, it takes almost as much energy to make as it produces. The turnover just isn't worthwhile in the long run.

Hydrogen, Solar, and Wind are all viable alternatives, and there are some very promising experiments happening now. The next 50 years are gonna be interesting and exciting for energy technology advancements.

Only about half the oil in oil reserves and deposits are what is known as cheap oil, that is oil which is easy to get out of the ground. After that, the rest of the oil cost much more to extract and thus oil costs more and energy is no longer cheap.

OPEC may have prematurely raised the prices of oil, but even now their members are overproducing, and who knows how long supply will last. Most countries, even those in the Middle East, has gone past peak production and now are producing less than they were before.

Oil is not just used for energy either. Petroleum products are used to make most of the fertilizer and pesticides in our farms, part of the reason we can support our population is because of the improvement fertizlizers and pesticides contribute to total yield of crops.

How will we transport ourselves without oil? Uranium power plant are being built but there are not enough uranium supplier to even meet current demand.

Hahah, even if we leave Iraq, we ain't leavin' the wells.

the most peaceful continent in the world probably has a vastly huge oil supply....yet nobody has to effort to go to antartica and move 15km of snow and ice before mining, sigh....*conjures up an idea*

*smacks around all environmentalists and people who don't know squat about oil*

Listen folks, we can pump as much crude oil as we want out of the middle east, and have all the oil in Iraq that the US wants. However, the refining capacity is maxed out, no new refineries have been made in 30 years due to bleeding-heart environmentalists. World demand has gone up (China, anyone?) and supply has remained relatively constant, therefore price goes up.

Simple economics.

country, country, country, country, continent!

Supply of processed, refined oil. Now, I haven't done much research in terms of drilling, but you could tap into all the sources of crude in the world, but without any new refineries, your supply of gasoline isn't going to increase.

There have been tons of new refineries, outside the US. There is land on the other side of those big oceans you know.

One solution would be to increase the gas millage of cars, but oil companies don't want that to happen so it doesn't.  There were cars in the 50's that weighed a hell of a lot more, didn't have much for aerodynamics, no fuel injection etc... that got 40+ miles to a gallon.  Here we are half a century later w/ lighter etc cars and most get less than 20 miles to a gallon.

Also if you're American the main reason for the gas prices atm is because all of the refineries are/were closed for spring maintenance. Yet another way the oil companies can increase the price which they do every summer using the same lame excuse.

Also Rox we still pay less for oil than most of the world from my understanding.  However, unlike most of the world our country wasn't smart enough to invest in mass transit early on and now I doubt many of us would go for it.

i think some day the world will be run on tomatoes, never run out of tomoatoes do ya?

    That's obviously because our engines are much stronger and don't go at a max of 10 mph........

EDIT: That is of course, assuming you are right. I have no idea if you are, and don't plan on actually looking it up.....

Petroleum is not just used for transportation you know, most of the world uses petroleum derived pesticides and fertilizers to get such high yields on their crops. If  price of oil goes up, undoubtedly so will the price of food and ethanol derived from plants.

question

if we borrowed the earth from our children wouldnt we be giving it to them when we die? so in a way our children are inheriting the earth but they arent inheriting it they are jsut getting it back

and if my parents borrowed it from me and my grandparents borrowed it from my parents how did i get it? so technically we did inherit the earth from our parents

and i say that when oil runs out cold fusion will be invented =P

Can you name a car like that, Mr. Thardin?  Typically, engines have become more efficient and more fuel-efficient over time, no less.

The old studebakers from the late 50s early 60s forgot what year it was exactly... anyway properly tuned got around 35mpg  w/ decent power I might add, probably more power than anything that gets that kind of mileage today.

Hell a properly tuned '68 Caddy (V-8 472 cubic inch engine 375 hp no fuel injection etc) can get in the mid 20s.  They have more power than most new c*beep*xcluding some sports cars) today. 

I can't remember the name of the one that got in the 40+ range but I'll post it later.  Anyway the point is, we are capable getting a hell of a lot more mileage from cars, but don't.  Why?  Because it's not profitable to make cars that get good gas mileage.  I'll admit some of the loss of mileage comes from more pollution control on cars now.  It also doesn't help that about 90% of the heat energy produced in the engine from the gasoline is being wasted. That's according to GM execs.

With the technology we have today we are more than capable of getting a lot better mileage using gasoline.

I just read about a sort of ironic new development in the NY Times. As we all know, the middle east has the biggest supply of oil in the world. Before the war a few years ago, the oil price was as low as $20 per barrel. At that low price, it made no economic sense to look for oil in other places, such as Canadas vast tar sand depots that you can extract oil from at a high cost.

But now with the disastrous Iraq war and the $50 barrel oil prices, the Canadian tar sands suddenly becomes an alternative. So now, according to the NY Times, Canada has the largest depot of oil in the world, and once it is properly developed looks to make the US independant of oil from the middle ea*beep*nny huh..