We are past peak easy-to-extract sweet light crude.
It has been said several times before. Each time the claim has been false. Some nations are past their peak.
Egypt, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and perhaps Saudi Arabia.
Other countries are just hitting their Peak, Canada, USA and even Mexico may be able to get significantly more.
Things shift. Things change. Global peak is only an estimate.
On current "Known" reserves.
Known reserves is a legal term. You have to be capable of demonstrating how much you have in order to claim it as a known reserve. You have legal liability on the trading and commodities market if you claim more than you have.
For these reasons, almost without exception actual production more or less always exceeds "Known" reserves. Sometimes dramatically so as the more you explore and exploit your field the more you are able to extract. Some fields have increased their "known" reserves by ten fold or more as they are being developed.
Putting a date on when known reserves will be exhausted ignores a few factors:
1. Current fields exceeding known values (see above)
2. Exploration and finding new fields.
3. New technologies to pull more oil from older and existing fields
4. and this one is more controversial - some older fields have been found to be somewhat recharged so we are not yet sure how much oil may still be in many of the older abandoned well fields.
The tar sands are being used because of the sheer amount of oil there, if I remember the estimates correctly, the tar sands in Alberta Canada exceed the total reserves for Saudi Arabia. i.e. HUGE. The funds from these fields are also dramatically help Canada to pull out of a downward fiscal spiral that would have bankrupted their health care system specifically and the government nationally in general.
If the tar in these sands had been from and industrial accident would consider the area a toxic waste. Because it came up naturally some people do not seem to want to allow us to profit from the clean up.
Fg and Jeff are right. The word "reserve" gets misused and is poorly understood. In the late 1800s, they said the world was running out of oil and there were only reserves for let's say 20 years. A funny thing happened.....technological growth and it has been happening since then. Development of oil sands and fracking is just a continuation of increased technology expanding reserves. Many new fields have been found. We have hundreds of years of reserves left. In 50 years we may have even more. That is what the Ehrlichs of this world just refuse to learn.
Note: It is interesting IMO that nearly all alarmists are Ehrlichs meaning they believe we are at peak oil. It reveals that alarmism is more about an attitude and political outlook than it is about science or reality. Again that is a lesson that Ehrlichs refuse to learn
Nope. And that's what's got the environmentalists in such a tizz. I was told we would be out of oil by the year 2000 in the 1970s.
Of course, back then, they thought the oil in the tar sands was inaccessible. They thought the oil under North Dakota was inaccessible.
They didn't know that techniques of today would get more oil out of "depleted" wells from the 1960s than what they originally produced.
"Peak oil"? Not hardly.
Think about this: EVERY year for the last ten years, more than ten years worth of oil has been discovered.
Your grandchildren's children will be wondering how many centuries of oil are left.
If you take into account the current known reserves, they are expected to run out around 2050.
BUT there is a strong possibility that there may be large stores under the Arctic ocean (hopefully they wont be allowed to drill there),and under both the Greenland ice sheet and the Permafrost. Plus Australia just found a wealth of oil. it would be nice to get oil from Australia instead of continually supporting the militant Jihad
No, we still have alot of oil reserves throughout the world. They are just not being accessed until now because they are now becoming economically feasible.
So we are certainly running out, but we still are finding new (harder to reach) reserves.
I guess you haven't heard of fracking. The United States is going to surpass the Middle East once we frack every location with oil in the US.
Nope --- where did you get that idea?
In reality KNOWN oil reserves are currently at their HIGHEST levels ever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserve...
We've been hearing the ---- ‘we are running out of oil’ --- scare tactic since the 1950's.
When I was ten years old, the 'experts' were talking about peak oil, I'm now 57 and they are still talking about peak oil, and KNOWN OIL RESERVES have INCREASED dramatically since I was a kid.
Oil reserves have NEVER declined since we first started keeping track of "known oil reserves."
Here are some interesting Oil Facts from Wiki.
In 1980 (34 years ago) SAUDI ARABIA said it had about 168 billion barrels of oil left. In 2010 SAUDI ARABIA reported it has about 264.5 billion barrels of oil left.
In 1980 IRAN said it had about 58.3 billion barrels of oil left. In 2010 IRAN reported it has about 151.2 billion barrels of oil left.
In 1980 VENEZUELA said it had about 19.5 billion barrels of oil left. In 2010 VENEZUELA reported it has about 296.5 billion barrels of oil left.
Are you starting to see a pattern above? Are you seeing that these oil producers are reporting they have about three times as much oil now as they did over thirty years ago?
See chart at Wiki that contains this information, (just below the chart that is linked)
Declared reserves of major Opec Producers (billion of barrels)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserve...
The incessant screeching that we are running out of oil is simply not based on the facts.
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given that we are resorting to tar sands just to keep things running
