Oil Will Be Gone in 50 Years: HSBC

[devils chaplain]

There could be less than 49 years of oil supplies left, even if demand were to remain flat according to HSBC’s senior global economist Karen Ward.

"We have become terribly complacent in the way in which we use energy," she added. "The lowest hanging fruit is in the transport sector. Smaller, more efficient cars will get you from A to B, just not as quickly."

"Government foresight on a scale not seen for 40 years will be needed to chart the route for the next 40 – at a time when the public sector in the OECD has perhaps the least capacity in decades to make strategic investments in new infrastructure."


Full story: http://www.cnbc.com/id/42224813/

Government foresight doesn't seem to extend beyond the next election, let alone 40 years into the future.

[Initech]

1. So why are we still fighting over it instead of researching alternatives?

[YellowRubberDuckie]

2. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I don't think it requires any other answer.....

[Initech]

4. There is money to be made in alternative energy too.

[kirby]

7. Lack of leadership and vision n/t

[YellowRubberDuckie]

8. I know that, you know that...

But those old bastards can't be convinced otherwise. And they aren't listening to T Boone.

[Motown_Johnny]

15. some people want the alternative to be coal

It isn't that they aren't planning on us running out of oil. The problem is that they have been planning on it for decades and things like wind and solar are not in their plan.

If we go that route how will we ever sell all our coal?

[taught_me_patience]

3. We'll look back in amazement and disgrace

at how we wasted oil. As oil reserves dwindle, price shocks will become more and more common.

[WingDinger]

5. This is why Obama is smart to get more suppply externally.

Leaving drill baby drill for later, when the shit is worth more than gold.

[joshcryer]

14. Yes, US foreign policy is "bleed everyone else dry, we're sitting on oil shale."

When shit hits the fan in 20-30 years, if renewables have not made much progress, we're going to have an interetsing WWIII.

[bullwinkle428]

24. "Interesting WWIII" to say the least, considering how dependent

any military is on oil!

[Raine]

6. I don't believe it

they sure don't act like, no future plans etc.

[pscot]

9. Just because we aren't included

doesn't mean they don't have plans for the future. This isn't news. Most Americans can't be bothered to think about it, but it's been known since the 50's.

[Thunderstruck]

13. Depends on who "they" are...

While it's true the issue is being denied and obfuscated here in the U.S., there are plenty of countries who know what's up and which are already well into their plans for the future.

[TheCanadianLiberal]

10. I'd believe it...

With the way we treat the environment now and don't care I wouldn't be surprised if we ran out of oil. I can't say it'd be a bad thing for the human race either.

[devils chaplain]

11. Running out of fossil fuels...

May just save the Earth from environmental catastrophe.

[Motown_Johnny]

16. coal is a fossil fuel and we have lots of it

Running out of oil won't save the earth, it may even speed up the decline if we don't get wind, solar and hydro on line fairly soon.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

29. If we have so much coal, how come there are not any coal powered cars around?

Why not make a small car with an electric motor powering the wheels and...... wait a minute....

[Thunderstruck]

12. Yep. And there's going to be a whole LOT of pain between now and then.

[Canuckistanian]

17. It's not that oil will be gone, it's that CHEAP oil will be gone

Once the market realizes that Saudi Arabia has no substantial reserves, it's all over for the family car.

The rich will still be able to run their Maseratis and Maybachs for the occasional joyride, but for the rest of us, we'll be renting horses to get to work.

[Thunderstruck]

27. Right now WTI is $105.20. CHEAP oil was gone years ago. CHEAP oil

is between $10 and $20. CHEAP oil was easy oil. There is no more easy oil. Hence oil gushers in the GoM and calls to drill in ANWR. If there were easier places to find and produce oil, they wouldn't be in these places as the EROEI would otherwise be prohibitive. But with nowhere else to drill, there they are. And it's only a matter of time before EROEI falls to a point where profits can no longer be made by producing oil.

[undeterred]

18. Honestly, I wish it was gone 50 years ago.

[KurtNYC]

19. ah, so NOW we know how long we will be in Libya and Iraq!

:hide:

[Zanzoobar]

20. Don't count on it.

The sun shines over there, I've heard.

[elocs]

21. I'll be gone in 50 years. Well, unless I live to be 108 and I have no desire to live that long. n/t

[CrispyQ]

22. "Government foresight doesn't seem to extend beyond the next election..."

And corporate foresight doesn't extend beyond the next quarter.

We are being ruled by a bunch of greedy, short-sighted assholes who care about nothing but their own fucking bank accounts. :grr: :grr: :grr:

[Amonester]

23. bingo!

If you think the truth hurts now... imagine in 50 years!

[Poll_Blind]

25. Best damn news I've heard all week!

PB

[Rage for Order]

26. Where have I heard this before?

Hmmm....

From the May 2006 issue of 'Reason' magazine

http://reason.com/archives/2006/05/05/peak-oil-panic

Predictions of imminent catastrophic depletion are almost as old as the oil industry. An 1855 advertisement for Kier’s Rock Oil, a patent medicine whose key ingredient was petroleum bubbling up from salt wells near Pittsburgh, urged customers to buy soon before “this wonderful product is depleted from Nature’s laboratory.” The ad appeared four years before Pennsylvania’s first oil well was drilled. In 1919 David White of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) predicted that world oil production would peak in nine years. And in 1943 the Standard Oil geologist Wallace Pratt calculated that the world would ultimately produce 600 billion barrels of oil. (In fact, more than 1 trillion barrels of oil had been pumped by 2006.)

During the 1970s, the Club of Rome report The Limits to Growth projected that, assuming consumption remained flat, all known oil reserves would be entirely consumed in just 31 years. With exponential growth in consumption, it added, all the known oil reserves would be consumed in 20 years. These dour predictions gained credibility when the Arab oil crisis of 1973 quadrupled prices from $3 to $12 per barrel (from $16 to $48 in 2006 dollars) and when the Iranian oil crisis more than doubled oil prices from $14 per barrel in 1978 to $35 per barrel by 1981 (from $45 to $98 in 2006 dollars).

The world consumes about 87 million barrels of oil per day, or nearly 30 billion barrels of oil per year. How much oil is left? It’s hard to be sure. Proven oil reserves—i.e., oil that is recoverable under current economic and operating conditions—are estimated to be 1.1 trillion barrels by the industry journal World Oil, 1.2 trillion by the oil company BP, and 1.3 trillion by the Oil and Gas Journal. In March 2005 the private U.K.-based energy consultancy IHS Energy estimated that the world’s remaining recoverable reserves, excluding unconventional sources such as heavy oil or tar sands, are between 1.3 trillion and 2.4 trillion barrels.

Consider the Kern River field in California, which was discovered in 1899. In 1942 it was estimated that only 54 million barrels remained to be produced there. During the next 44 years the field produced 736 million barrels and had another 970 million barrels remaining. For geological reasons, petroleum engineers cannot pump every drop of oil out of a reservoir. But by 2004 technological advances enabled them to recover 35 percent of a conventional reservoir’s oil, up from an average of 22 percent in 1980. If this recovery factor can be increased by another five percentage points, that would boost worldwide recoverable reserves by more than all of Saudi Arabia’s current proven reserves. Economides points out that in 1976 the U.S. was estimated to have 23 billion barrels of reserves remaining. In 2005 it still had 23 billion barrels of oil reserves, even though American oil fields produced almost 40 billion barrels of oil between 1976 and 2005.


Much more at the link.

Of course, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't be actively pursuing alternative methods of transportation that does not involve oil (excet maybe to lubricate the moving parts). I support getting off of oil entirely and into fully electric vehicles nationwide no later than 2025 (not fuel/electric hybrids).

[Thunderstruck]

28. First of all, REASON? Really? Second,

yes, there is about 1.1 - 1.3 trillion barrels of oil left in the ground. And that is just about the amount of oil that we've already used so far. Which means we've burned half-way through all the oil we'll ever have. The problems are manifold, but there are three main problems. First, this is oil that will at some point soon begin to be produced less and less each day, meaning it will become more and more scarce. The second problem is, as it becomes more scarce it will become more and more expensive, shutting out more and more people from the poor up in a world where the population is steadily increasing. And the third problem is, ALL of that oil still remains to be discovered, developed, and produced at higher and higher costs to producers.

Yes, there is undoubtedly much more oil out there. But long before we can suck it all out of the ground the economics of oil production will become prohibitive and eventually there will no longer be profits to made while there are still hundreds of billions of barrels oil still left in the ground, too expensive to make producing it worthwhile.