Did you know that within 30 years, we will have burned through most of our oil supply?

I am currently reading a book called 'The End of Oil' by Paul Roberts. He is a writer and an expert on technology, economics, and nature.





In this book, he writes about how our dependence on oil is hurting us badly. We are going to run out of oil within 30 years. All of the cars we have built will be no longer any use to us. Within the next 3 decades, we will no longer have the energy resource we have taken for granted all these years.





So, with all this said, do you think our government is doing enough to find a more reliable, cleaner, safer energy source?Did you know that within 30 years, we will have burned through most of our oil supply?
What's the copyright date on that book? I heard it was sooner than that. And no, the government is not doing enough. If the government really wants to do something about this, then they should really use the scare tactic to get people to stop doing stupid things like idling their A/C'd cars in front of a mall and turning off lights when there's no more need for them. All these hybrid cars and energy efficient light bulbs are swell, but in the end, it's all up to us; not technology.Did you know that within 30 years, we will have burned through most of our oil supply?
I wrote the answer below in response to another question about the ';end of oil,'; but it works just as well for this one.





One often hears about ';Hubbert's Peak,'; which was a prediction made about fifty years ago by M. King Hubbert, a geologist with Shell Oil, that US oil production would peak in about 1970 and decline precipitously thereafter. People often extrapolate from this to infer that we are ';running out'; of oil on a worldwide basis, but that is not a valid inference. What Hubbert was referring to was the light, easily obtainable crude that was the hallmark of US production. In that sense Hubbert was right.





HOWEVER, those predictions were also based on the price of oil at the time of about $20 a barrel (in today's dollars), and falling, and on the technology of the time. Even in the US, due to both improvements in technology and the rise in the price of oil, we are able to produce oil from formations that would have been impossible in Hubbert's time.





So-called ';proven reserves'; are a measure not only of the oil that is known to exist in various places, but also what is economically extractable with current technology. If we knew that there were a trillion barrels of oil on the Moon, for instance, they would not be considered proven reserves because we have no way of extracting that oil. But the oil would still be there, nevertheless, awaiting an improvement in technology that would allow us to extract it economically.





Currently Saudi Arabia is considered to have the largest proven reserves, at 180 to 260 billion barrels (depending on who is doing the measuring). Second is Iraq, with 115 billion barrels. The Saudis are currently producing about 3 billion barrels a year, and at that rate we have sixty to ninety years of Saudi production left. Iraq, by contrast, is barely producing at all. There are only 3,000 producing wells in Iraq, compared with 300,000 in Texas alone, and Texas does not have nearly the proven reserves that Iraq has. Also, Iraq has had a bit of disruption in its production of late, and is not even producing at the rate it was before the invasion in 2003, and that was not very much.





Then there are other potential sources of oil. For instance, Canada is considered to have 180 billion barrels of ';proven reserves,'; but most of that is in the form of oil sands, which are much harder to refine than the nice, fluid heavy Saudi crude. The steep rise in the price of oil over the last few years has made Canada's oil sands profitable to produce. In fact, when it comes to ';foreign'; oil, most of the US imports come from Canada. We get a little more from the Middle East as a whole, but on a per-country basis, Canada comes out ahead.





Then, too, there are the 300 billion barrels of ';proven reserves'; under Venezuela, most of which is in the form of tar oil, which is a very, VERY, thick form. Up until recently, this has been almost prohibitively expensive to extract, but with oil in the $65-$70 per barrel range, and projected to go up, this is looking more doable.





Finally, there are an estimated two trillion barrels of oil, more than in all of the Middle East, locked up in oil shales under the Rocky Mountains, right here in the US. But this oil is currently almost unproduceable, due to both the difficulty of extraction and of refining. But it's there, and with oil at the right price, and with the right technology, it is possible.





All of this does not even consider the potential for offshore production. Just recently there was a huge new find out in the Gulf of Mexico, and people have been exploring there for decades. We have barely begun to explore the deeper ocean.





To make a long story short, there are billions, and potentially trillions, of barrels of oil left. At current rates of consumption, and even considering increased demand from the burgeoning economies of India and China, we have enough oil for at least a hundred years or more, conservatively. And given a high enough price for oil, and the right technology, it could be much longer.





But of course if the price of oil, and all the things made from oil, gets to be too high, then other forms of energy which may not currently be seen as economically feasible will become a lot more attractive. Ultimately, we will probably never ';run out'; of oil, because long before that last barrel of shale oil is laboriously pulled from the ground and refined, we will have developed other, more economical energy sources.
I remember them saying the exact same thing in the 1970's. (And my dad heard the same thing in the 1940's.)
Yeah...I remember when I was a kid ';experts'; agreed that we would surely be out of oil by 2000. What happened with that? I agree on principle that we should not be dependant on foreign energy from a political perspective.
we got told the same thing 30 years ago in school


dont beleive everything you read
I don't know where those figures come from, but there is , at current usage, an estimated 150 to 200 years supply of oil still untapped world wide.