World Could Run Out Of Oil In 20 Years

[1929crash]

'We Have to Save, Save, Save'

The world could run out of oil in 20 years. This grim scenario is not the prediction of environmentalists, but of Michel Mallet, the general manager of French energy giant Total's German operations. In an interview, Mallet calls for radical reduction of gas consumption and a tax on aviation fuel.

[1929crash]

'We Have to Save, Save, Save'

The world could run out of oil in 20 years. This grim scenario is not the prediction of environmentalists, but of Michel Mallet, the general manager of French energy giant Total's German operations. In an interview, Mallet calls for radical reduction of gas consumption and a tax on aviation fuel.

Edited April 15, 2009 by 1929crash

[1929crash]

'We Have to Save, Save, Save'

The world could run out of oil in 20 years. This grim scenario is not the prediction of environmentalists, but of Michel Mallet, the general manager of French energy giant Total's German operations. In an interview, Mallet calls for radical reduction of gas consumption and a tax on aviation fuel.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/busine...,618911,00.html

Edited April 15, 2009 by 1929crash

[yellerkat]

Run out of affordable oil.

Obviously there'll always be a drop or two left at S900 a barrel.

[1929crash]

Run out of affordable oil.

Obviously there'll always be a drop or two left at S900 a barrel.

It's not just monetary affordability. There's the question of energy expended to get the oil. If you use a barrel of oil equivalent to get a barrel of oil, that is an exercise in futility.

The old oil fields are dying. In the future, we will have to invest more and more just to maintain existing production

[Housing Bear]

'We Have to Save, Save, Save'

The world could run out of oil in 20 years. This grim scenario is not the prediction of environmentalists, but of Michel Mallet, the general manager of French energy giant Total's German operations. In an interview, Mallet calls for radical reduction of gas consumption and a tax on aviation fuel."

Concerning the price of oil there has been no mention of the fact that a high percentage of oil comes from areas of the world map very prone to war and terrorism. In the event of any major events in these areas oil production and delivery would almost certainly be affected. It is therefore extremely difficult /unwise to make any predictions about the price of oil over the next 20 years. In addition, there are serious desires by some OPEC countries to price oil in Euros, or some other, possibly gold backed, currency. This could also dramatically affect the price. Any thoughts?

[interestrateripoff]

It's not just monetary affordability. There's the question of energy expended to get the oil. If you use a barrel of oil equivalent to get a barrel of oil, that is an exercise in futility.

Could you explain the flaw in this please?

[Guest Steve Cook]

'We Have to Save, Save, Save'

The world could run out of oil in 20 years. This grim scenario is not the prediction of environmentalists, but of Michel Mallet, the general manager of French energy giant Total's German operations. In an interview, Mallet calls for radical reduction of gas consumption and a tax on aviation fuel."

Concerning the price of oil there has been no mention of the fact that a high percentage of oil comes from areas of the world map very prone to war and terrorism. In the event of any major events in these areas oil production and delivery would almost certainly be affected. It is therefore extremely difficult /unwise to make any predictions about the price of oil over the next 20 years. In addition, there are serious desires by some OPEC countries to price oil in Euros, or some other, possibly gold backed, currency. This could also dramatically affect the price. Any thoughts?

Yes

Also, it's worth bearing in mind that much of the trouble and strife of these regions is precisely because they are where the oil is. In other words, it is the very presence of oil there that has caused the major players in the World to constantly interfere with the natural economic and cultural development of these regions.

In terms of predictability of price over the coming decades, I think that the most we can say is that the price will be incredibly volatile with an underlying price-trend that points inexorably north.This will make it very difficult for anyone wishing to bet on oil futures as this high volatility will constantly push investors off their position unless they have sufficient funds to maintain their position.

So, as ever, only the big players will be able to play the game.

What a surprise.....

Edited April 15, 2009 by Steve Cook

[Minos]

If they can make it 30 years before it starts "running out" I'd be grateful. I'll have lived a full life by then and won't care after that.

[sandster]

Or maybe that's why Iraq was invaded now, security of supply 20 years down the road when it is required.

[Thunderbird 900]

Yawn...

I remember hearing this nonsense in the 1970's...By the turn of the century oil supplies would be drying up. Tomorrow's World also said we will be flying around in silver suits with jet packs attached to our back. I don't think so.

There are still vast untapped oil reserves in Russia and also elsewhere in the World. I'm sure oil will eventually run out but I cannot see it happening in our lifetime.

[xux42]

It's not just monetary affordability. There's the question of energy expended to get the oil. If you use a barrel of oil equivalent to get a barrel of oil, that is an exercise in futility.

Yeah but, no but...

If you can use $50 of solar energy to extract $200 of oil.

You would, wouldn't you?

Even if we had oodles of renewables, some people will still race petrol cars, run V8s at the weekend, need a petrol mower for their 200m garden etc., etc.

[Bjørn]

I too remember reading that crap in 1970. World going to run out of oil and fresh water within 30 years.

Alvin Toffler made millions out of that crap.

Since then the price of oil has gone from $3/bbl to over $140 and I don't doubt that in 40 years from now it will have gone up by a similar multiple again.

[tedies friend]

The key issue with oil is the production and distribution of FOOD, there will still be lots of oil in 20 years time, there will also be at current population growth, 1,400,000,000 more people on this earth, oil production(extraction really) will be say half what it is today, even considering using the vast shale reserves in Alberta, so we wont have run out, but what price $500 a barrel or more and £20 a loaf of bread, £50 a bag of rice and no pay increse from today

[Alan B'Stard MP]

Was speaking to an oil engineer or somesuch at doha international. he was quite adamant that oil wasnt going to run out in our and probably our kids lifetimes.

[Gone baby gone]

It's not just monetary affordability. There's the question of energy expended to get the oil. If you use a barrel of oil equivalent to get a barrel of oil, that is an exercise in futility.

Oil will still be needed for some things (plastics, possibly aero-fuel, etc.) even if the rest of the energy consuming world is using something else. I think it is highly likely we will end up spending say 2 joules of energy to extract oil worth 1 joule, we just won't be using the resulting oil for general purpose energy storage/generation.

World could run out of oil in 20 years.

World could be hit by an asteroid next week and destroyed.

Lot's of things could happen. It's the things that are likely to happen we need to worry about most.

[rogerthelodger]

Yawn...

I remember hearing this nonsense in the 1970's...By the turn of the century oil supplies would be drying up. Tomorrow's World also said we will be flying around in silver suits with jet packs attached to our back. I don't think so.

There are still vast untapped oil reserves in Russia and also elsewhere in the World. I'm sure oil will eventually run out but I cannot see it happening in our lifetime.

i remember reading this in books at school in the 70s,i also read that a new ice age was just round the corner

i'm still waiting for delivery of my personal hovercraft

anyway our great leader (alex salmond) said there's about 150 years worth in the north sea !

[Minos]

i remember reading this in books at school in the 70s,i also read that a new ice age was just round the corner

i'm still waiting for delivery of my personal hovercraft

anyway our great leader (alex salmond) said there's about 150 years worth in the north sea !

I remember hearing, in the 2000's, that the earth was going to burn up and we all would drown.

[DementedTuna]

I'm alright, Jack. Will be dead long before this happens. Gonna park my a*se on some triple-ply bog roll cut from virgin forests and laugh while the world burns.

Our kids are all gonna be like "wtf we're starving", and the radio's gonna be all like "oil ran out, need oil to make food, you starve now", and the kids will be all like "wtf how does oil make food?", and then we all die, lol.

And then 10,000 years from now archaeologist will decipher this post but not get the irony aspect and think I'm a monster.

Edited April 15, 2009 by DementedTuna

[blankster]

Humans have been around for between 1.5 and 2 million years. Civiliasations have been about for as much as 10,000 years. The 'Oil Age' is barely 100 years old - if you take 1910 as about the time the world embarked on the voyage to mass oil dependency - although mineral oil was being used before then. Consumption is going up and likely to continue to do so. The figure I've seem most quoted on the length of time before oil becomes scarce is usually around 40 years.

But with increasing consumption that time is likley to reduce.

North Sea gas is a wake-up call on this. I remember when North Sea gas was the great saviour, the solution to all our heating and cooking needs for ever. Now it's running out.

It's not when oil runs out completely that matters here - it will probably never run out completely. It's when it starts to become increasingly scarce in relation to demand, and price goes up and up and possibly rationing would be needed too.

But there's a plus side on this one - as the oil and gas run out, the CO2 emissions will diminish. So if we had been contributing to global warming, we'll reduce that contribution. If the recent global warming turns out to be entirely natural, hard luck!

An interesting article in autocar this week claims that in some cases electric cars could be 100% emission free - since they could effectively be used to store spare energy generated by wind turbines during the night that would otherwise go to waste. The serious motoring press is getting excited about battery electric cars now like I've never seen before. For localised use they make sense. Vans even more so.

Edited April 15, 2009 by blankster

[1929crash]

Was speaking to an oil engineer or somesuch at doha international. he was quite adamant that oil wasnt going to run out in our and probably our kids lifetimes.

Did he say where it - the oil - is?

[Gone baby gone]

Did he say where it - the oil - is?

It's in the ground silly!

[blankster]

There are a lot of places where there are believed to be large oil reserves, like South Atlantic around the Falkland Islands, for instance.

But the oil would be extremely difficult to get. In the case of the South Atlantic, the sea is between 1km and 2km deep, then you have to drill through the seabed too. It is not known whether this would even be feasable.

Edited April 15, 2009 by blankster

[Bjørn]

Was speaking to an oil engineer or somesuch at doha international. he was quite adamant that oil wasnt going to run out in our and probably our kids lifetimes.

Yup, he's right. It's not oil as you might think of it though.

He was talking about Gas To Liquids (GTL). Qatar has unbelievably vast amounts of gas, but gas is tricky to transport intercontinentally. What GTL does is to process the gas molecules directly into finished products such as diesel, petrol, jet fuel, heating oil etc.

GTL not only adds value to the raw feedstock but also makes it much more transportable. The products are also "cleaner" burning, ie less of the nasties such as sulphur.

Ironically the oil industry has come full circle. The world's first oil refinery was set up near Bathgate by James "Paraffin" Young to process a highly bitumenous form of coal into lamp oil and other oil products. Spindletop and all the "gusher" thing came a decade or three later.

During WW2 the Germans were heavily dependent on the production of oil products such as petrol and diesel from coal. A fact that Shell's official history has airbrushed out of existence is that its leader, Henri Deterding was an ardent Nazi supporter (so was Dubya's Granpappy Prescott Bush, but that's another story) and co-operated extensively with the develoment of that technology. Today if you gominto the main entrance hall of Shell House in London you can see an empty alcove in the wall. That was for a bust of Henri deterding which has been discreetly removed and disposed of.

Today Shell GTL is a world leader in GTL technology and their Qatar project is the prime centre of excellence in that technology.

[DementedTuna]

they could effectively be used to store spare energy generated by wind turbines during the night that would otherwise go to waste.

You know, that's one idea I hadn't heard of until now.

And it's a bloody brilliant idea too.