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I read somewhere that 18% of the world's oil supply has been pumped and used but that that 18% was easier to extract than much of the remaining 82%. I do not know if this claim is correct.
The 18% you mention is the 18% number they have been giving out for a while,and bumping up every so often,as it suits them to.
American oilfield Engineers and 'ologists know the real score and speak freely of more than 99% of oil being untouched.(not just known reserves either),we are awash with it,as well as water and Gas.
There is not much point in building refining capacity for a supply you know does not exist.Originally Posted by C_steam
Unlikely. The consequences of very high oil prices might help achieve CO2 targets but only at a cost which might endanger not merely the EU but its component parts and certainly apply enormous pressure to their social engineering project.
Between the end of the 70's oil shock and today oil production increased by a third, rather undermining the idea that supply is being artificially restricted.
The figure of 18% might well be correct. However without knowing whether that includes the oil shale and tar sands are included in that figure it is not particularly useful. Unfortunately the process of turning these into usable oil is so energy intensive and polluting as to make the whole enterprise marginal. The return is estimated as one barrel in for two barrels out, early conventional crude deposits provided thirty to one and better. Two to one might not even be sufficient to make the process economically feasible.
Clearly the easiest oil has been extracted. We would not be spending billions in the North Sea and dealing with the House of Saud if there was a load of easy oil under say Paris. Additionally the screams for the Arctic to be raided would not be quite so shrill if there were an alternative.
It is also worth noting that most of the oil on Earth will never be recovered. Oil can only be extracted under particular circumstances, unless you can get it by ramming a pipe into the rocks and at worst pumping water in to force the magic goo out it does not mater how much is there is in any given place. Moreover our extraction technology is not that hot, if there is a trillion barrels at the bottom of some deep sea trench its staying there.
Its also worth noting that the last year which we discovered more oil than we extracted was thirty years ago. This despite the increasing desperate surveying of the entire planet. And that oil use per global capita has already reached a peak as population growth outstripped the increasing production of oil a few years back.
The Peak Oil doomers are obsessed by the half way point of extracting what are known as ultimately recoverable reserves. However this may not be the critical point. It may well be that demand exceeding supply is just as lethal, even if supply continues to increase. This has unequivocally all ready happened.
It may be that the remaining reserves are sufficiently difficult and therefore expensive to extract that the era of cheap oil is over whether or not a peak of total oil production has been reached. The consequences of this could be similar to those of Peak oil itself.
For those who still think that this is some sort of scam by BP here is a list of nations which have already achieved peak production and are now in decline. If these nations are running a scam then they are showing some quite incredible restraint.
Its also worth noting that "Big Oil" only controls 15% of global reserves, the rest are held by nationalized companies. So if you think your being stiffed its not BP who are responsible but the governments of oil nations.
Given that we don't know what resources remain untapped (we wouldn't continue exploration if we did) I don't think anyone can claim to know how much remains.
I think that there are a few telling points though.
We can't pump oil from the ground until it is discovered but the volumes being discovered are declining and have being doing so for decades. This is despite having the availability of better seismic imaging technology.
So.
We have better tools and techniques for finding the black stuff but....
We are, on average, finding less of it year on year.
We are, on average, using more of it year on year.
Considering the fabulously valuable raw material crude oil is actually it’s a scandal that we are just burning the stuff in the first place.
Future generations will look at what we have been doing and see it in the same category as we now see the burning of Egyptian mummies to fuel steam trains and other odd uses they have been put to.
Mummies
kallistē
I think that nuclear power is a laughing joke. Mainly because it's too dangerous and I can tell that it will expose the people to dangerous aerobourne chemicals rather than gas that will explode rather than be ingested into our lungs or radiation into our skin. France is pretty much running only on nuclear power, and so it will reckoning on thier people eventually. Brazile is using sugar to cultivate energy which strains food demands like ethanol on America's corn crops. None of these will do and no water vapor is not the source of global warming for God's sakes. It's far too remote and by the time it hits the atmosphere that it will disolve. One energy will change into another, so it will happen but in what form? I am really what sure what to say about energy much anuymore because all solutions come with a price but we will preveil in whatever form whether by war or inavation or not.
How dangerous is too dangerous?
Few human endeavours are without risk.
Road deaths in the USA are around 40,000 a year. Nuclear???
If you are risk averse, never get in an automobile. In fact, avoid all road travel at all costs.
We have overpopulated this planet by way too much and are going to suffer the consequences.
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