The earth has vast amounts of oil, shortages are really created by governments
The case is made that their is plenty of oil in the earth. At even half of the price we see today there would be no oil shortage if it were not for the government regulations preventing the exploration and extraction and OPEC nation government’s creating intentional shortages to rob importers. The free enterprise system could solve our energy problems in a few years if government would just get out of the way. Not to even mention that oil may not be a fossil fuel at all and that new deposits may be being created.
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.
Date posted: Thursday, May 8th, 2008 1:44 pm | Under category: economy
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Please use statistical facts and referenences. I have not seen any statistical facts describing or validating a specific amount of oil on this earth. Very hard to determine but someone needs to take on this issue in a more serious way. I have seen equations and results describing how much oil a specific area can be expected to produce but that is just not enough. Also, more scientific research needs to be done on oil’s relationship to the earth and possible roles it plays in atmospheric changes, earth’s rotation or stability, and the impact on the earth’s mass of removing too much oil.
Some of what you said just does not make sense. Removing oil from the ground does not change the earth’s mass. The mass just takes a different form on the earth. As for the rotation or stability are you really seeing any change of rotation now due to oil removal? Millions of windmills may have a greater impact on the earth’s rotation. I assume you are saying that only because you think that mass is removed. It is not.
Removing oil can cause local minor earthquakes but that is not an issue anyone is going to lose sleep over considering the alternative. The atmospheric changes are minor compared to volcanic activity and more CO2 may actually be beneficial to life.
Nobody knows how much oil is in the earth and they probably never will. Most likely the earth is continually producing new oil. What we do know is that there are trillions of barrels in the oil reserves already found, most of that is in oil shale and oil sands and heavy crude.
It is not logical to expect a scientific paper with statistical facts and references on a Blog opinion. Did you even bother to read the entire article that I quoted only a small part of? The amount of known reserves can be found by doing a little research on your own. Even on this Blog under the category of “oil” I believe I link to more than one article that states the amount of oil in shale in the U.S.
Frankly, between oil, oil shale, oil sands and synthetic oil from coal we do not need to worry about availability of oil for a thousand years. All we need to focus on is find out how to get it out of the earth with minimal impact to the environment at reasonable costs. That information is now becoming known. Shale and oil sands projects are already doing that and coal is already used to make almost all of the oil used in South Africa.