Are the oil wells drying up?

These folks say yes -- and predict it may happen sooner than we might think

Technical writer Bruce Thomson, Toronto, Canada, is also the moderator of the Running On Empty website. He and his colleagues have been looking at the possibility of oil shortages or depletion.

Here are their predictions:

Within 10 years oil extraction from wells will be physically unable to meet global demand (the evidence is from the oil industry itself). Alternative energy sources like nuclear and natural gas will fall far short of compensating for expected shortages of oil. There is simply not enough time to convert over to them. Massive disruptions to transportation and the economy are expected around 2010 when the final peak of production of all petroleum liquids (globally) is followed by decline.

Most significant effects: Gradual, permanent cut-off of fuel for transport and for industrial machinery. Global trade will greatly decline. Agriculture (food production) depends heavily on fertilizers and chemicals made from oil. There may be shortages of 500,000 other products made from oil. Therefore, reduction of virtually all business and government activity.

Difficulty of adapting: A major part of the problem is that existing equipment is designed only for oil fuels. For example, the world's 11,000 airliners cannot run on natural gas, nuclear or coal.

By-products of oil: Cost and decreasing availability of 500,000 known uses of oil, including fertilizers, medicines, plastics, insulation, computers, asphalt, inks, toners, paints, glues, solvents, antiseptics, golf balls, CDs, trash bags, nail polish, detergents, chewing gum, etc.

Hidden Problem: Not only will the oil supply dwindle, but the shortages and climbing prices will obstruct industry as it attempts to convert society to other forms of energy.

Proof of impending shortages: Much uninformed literature says oil is plentiful and that better extraction will maintain adequate supplies for decades. However our research reveals less and less oil being discovered, and dwindling outputs from the steadily emptying wells.

Alternative energy sources will not prevent shortages because as oil replacements they are grossly inadequate both in quantity and versatility of use. There is insufficient time to prevent heavy impacts.

When and bow bad. Year when global oil supply first fails to meet global demand -- about 2009.

Rate of decline of global oil supply: 3% every year from 2009 onward.

Duration of decline: Forever. Oil takes millions of years to form, in very special geological conditions.

Barrels consumed globally per year: More than 22 billion in 1999. (About two billion barrels per month.)

Barrels discovered globally per year: About six billion. Discovery of oil fluctuates each year, but peaked in the 1960s and has declined at an average of about nine billion barrels per year over the past 40 years. We've mostly just been using up huge old oil fields.

Pre-1973 discovered oil in use today: More than 70% of present global supply.

Ratio of oil consumed to oil discovered each year: Four consumed for every one discovered.

Oil ratio chart:

Discovered      Extracted       Consumed

USA from
1977-1991
5 billion       45 billion      92 billion (twice as much as
                                extracted)

World
1982-1991
91 billion      221 billion     221 billion (equal to all extracted)

http:/users.knsi.com/~tbender/ivanhoe.html

Proportion of global energy provided by oil in developed countries: 40% (1997)

The inadequate "invest more to find it" idea: After a century of exploration, the earth's geology and oil resources are generally well known. When the fields are emptying, money only helps to scrape out the hard-to-reach remainder. There are 210 billion barrels left to discover and 1,000 billion barrels left to extract. This is indicated by the 40-year decline in discovery of oil. No amount of money will create oil that isn't there.

Number of oil wells already in the world: More than 500,000. In the US 80% of the wells now produce less than three barrels a day.

Percentage of oil recovered from a typical oil well: 20-60%. It relates primarily to the density of the oil. You get less from a heavy oil than a light one because it sticks in the reservoir.

"Technology will solve it" idea

The challenge to technology: To compensate for the expected 3% oil decline (at today's 22 billion barrels a year), create and install permanent supplies of portable energy by 2009. Then as oil keeps declining forever, increase this new energy until it replaces 40% of the world's energy supply or reduce energy demand equivalently as the global population increases by almost a quarter million people every day.

The "better efficiency" idea: Increases in efficiency usually fail to reduce consumption (more m.p.g, just causes people to travel more or buy two cars) unless they are personally determined to reduce their consumption.

What about nuclear power?

Nuclear power is currently being abandoned globally (International Energy Agency, 1999). Its ability to soften the oil crash is very problematic:

* Past accidents, risk of more, and terrorism.

* Many more reactors would be needed.

* Tons of radioactive materials to transport at risk to public.

* Nuclear waste disposal is still the major, unresolved problem, especially breeder reactors producing plutonium -- a nuclear weapon/terrorist raw material, whose half-life contamination is 24,000 years.

* All abandoned reactors are radioactive for decades or millennia.

* Nuclear is not directly suitable for aircraft and vehicles.

* Adapting nuclear to make hydrogen or other fuels would be a huge and energy-expensive project.

* Nuclear fusion is still not available after 40 years of research and billions of dollars invested.

Natural gas

Proportion of global energy provided by gas: 20% (1997)

As a replacement for oil: Gas too, will begin running out from 2020 on. Demand for natural gas in North America is already outstripping supply, especially as power utilities take the remaining gas to generate electricity.

Gas is not suited for existing jet aircraft, ships, vehicles, and equipment for agriculture and other products. Conversion consumes large amounts of energy as well as money. Natural gas also does not provide the huge array of chemical by-products that we depend on oil for.

Hydro-electric

Present use: 2.3% of global energy supply (1997)

As a replacement for oil: Very small compared with 40% provided at present by oil. Unsuitable for aircraft and the present 722 million existing vehicles.

Coal

Current global uses: 24% of global energy supply.

As a replacement for oil: It is 50% to 200% heavier than oil per energy unit; bulky and dirty; would require expansion of coal mining, leading to land ruin and increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

Hard to fine-control the rate of burn: Tuning the rate of burn of oil and gas is easy, but coal is different. It is therefore used in power stations to make electricity, wasting half of its energy content.

Coal mining operations run on oil fuels: Present coal-mining machinery and transportation runs on oil-based fuels.

Pollution: A single coal-fired station can produce a million tons of solid waste each year. Burning coal in homes pollutes the air with acrid smog containing acid gases and particles. Large pollution and environmental problems include smog, greenhouse gases and acid rain.

Solar and wind

Global solar use: 0.006%. Energy varies constantly with weather/day/ night. Not storable or portable like oil or natural gas, so it is unsuitable for present vehicles and industry. Batteries are bulky, expensive, and wear out in five to 10 years. Photovoltaic solar equipment is about 15 % efficient giving about 100 watts of the 1kW per square meter exposed to bright sunshine -- enough for one light bulb. A typical solar water panel array can deliver 50-80% of a home's hot water though. Using some of our precious remaining crude oil as fuel for manufacturing solar and wind equipment may be wise.

Global wind power use: 0.07% of 1990 global energy supply. As with solar, energy varies greatly with weather, and is not portable or storable like oil and gas. Each wind turbine from Denmark produces an average of 698 kW averaged over a year.

Hydrogen

1998 US use: 0.01%

As a replacement for oil: Hydrogen is currently manufactured from methane gas. It takes more energy to create it than the hydrogen actually provides. It is therefore an energy "carrier" not a source. Liquid hydrogen occupies four to 11 times the bulk equivalent of gasoline or diesel. Existing vehicles, aircraft and distribution systems are not suited to it. Solar hydrogen might be an option in some hotter climates.

Alternatives

Other sources of energy: Shale, tar sand, coalbed methane, ethanol, biomass (from vegetation), etc.

Effectiveness as replacements for oil: Huge investments in research and infrastructure to exploit them, plus large amounts of now-expiring oil supply. Six percent of US gas is from non-conventional generation.

The major problem is that they cannot be exploited before the oil shocks cripple attempts to bring them on line, and the rate of extraction is far too slow to meet he huge global energy demand.

How a shortage may affect us

Food supply:

* Food production and delivery depends on oil.

* Food grains now contain between four and 10 calories of fossil fuel for every one calorie of solar energy. Four percent of US energy budget is used to grow food, while 10 to 13% is needed to put it onto our plates. The worsening oil shortages will make production increasingly expensive. Putting food production closer to cities will be vital, feeding animals is questionable.

* Percentage of US grain used to feed cattle: 70%.

* Efficiency: The meat feeds 1/5 as many people as the grain could.

* Number of cats and dogs in the US: 131 million.

* Food given to pets: North American pet food business is $30 billion/ year and growing.

"Future food" is being consumed by using gasoline in vehicles. Gasoline consumed now will deprive future agriculture of energy for producing food. Below are examples of how much "future food" a 30 m.p.g, vehicle is "eating" now. Also shown is the heavy physical labor humans will have to do in the future when gasoline is unavailable for farm/industry/office/home machinery:

* Bread, 1 kg loaf = 6 miles = one slice per 422 yards. Therefore, 1/5 gallon = 23 hours human heavy farm labor.

* Beef, 1 kg = 76.2 miles. Therefore, 2.5 gallons = 300 hours human heavy farm labor.

* Canned corn, 1 kg = 4.5 miles. Again, 1/5 gallon = 20 hours human labor.

Oil uses for transportation, business, globalization:

* Automobiles, globally: 722 million

* Automobiles, US: 132 million

* Trucks, all types US: 1.5 million

* Buses, all types, US: more than 654,000

* Locomotives, US: 26,000

* World aircraft fleet: 11,000 with more than 100 passengers. All designed for oil-based fuel.

* Worldwide ships: 85,000

* Decked fishing boats in the world: 1.2 million

* Globalization will end due to fuel costs and scarcity.

* Energy to build an energy-efficient home is equivalent to 6,500 gallons of gasoline.

All of this will be affected in addition to government services (water, sewage disposal, health systems, national defense, etc.), economy, employment and quality of life aspects.

So why are these warnings coming out now?

They believe (for business and political reasons), there have been misleading reports of sizes of stocks of oil:

A. By first understating discoveries and then later overstating discoveries, oil companies have given the false, but pleasing impression of an increasing discovery trend. Investors respond accordingly and finance more exploration.

B. The seven major oil-extracting countries have reported unchanged reserves for years, even as they were extracting and selling billions of barrels of oil.

C. In 1988 five of those countries claimed they each had about twice as much reserve oil as in 1987.

D. We have enjoyed using gasoline, heating oil, plastics and countless other oil products for decades. The oil kept flowing generously. We "looked on the bright side" and mostly ignored warnings by environmentalists that fossil fuels would run out. The media constantly announced new oil discoveries and increasing stocks of oil. Now they are really running on empty.

E. OPEC countries need to earn as much oil revenue as possible to support rapidly growing populations where the public health care, education and other services are provided free -- from oil revenues, not taxes. "As a group of fossil fuel exporters, OPEC stands to lose more than most from any proposal that threatens to cut oil consumption." -- Rilwanu Lukman, the Secretary General of OPEC, speaking at the 16th World Petroleum Congress, Calgary, 2000. (Globe & Mail Newspaper, June 5, 2000.)

What you can do

* Reduce energy dependence of family, home, lifestyle. The less fuels I and goods you consume, the less the impacts will be, and the more we will delay the oil shocks.

* Work on it with friends, coworkers, neighborhoods and governments. The ideal use for remaining oil and mineral reserves is into industries that create inexhaustible alternative energy like windmills, solar water heaters, biomass, etc.

* Stay positive and active rather than ignore it or blame others for it. Where there's life there's hope, especially if we all collaborate and are creative. Humans have always faced hardships and many among us do so constantly now.

New medications from sea creatures may be in our future

Small creatures cling to off shore oil rigs, and scientists in California and Louisiana are looking at them for use in medications to cure everything from headaches to cancer. Scientists pluck these tiny creatures off the underwater pilings to examine the exotic chemistry that allows them to fend off predators. "Unlike animals, plants can't run away from things that will eat them," says Steve Gaines, director of the Marine Science Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara. Therefore, their defense is chemical. "They play chemical warfare with herbivores that want to eat them," he states.

Sea squirts, mussels, sponges and other lifeforms that cling to the pilings also come up with chemical defenses.

Gaines believes the chemistry that allows these creatures to survive could also help humans ward off some diseases.

Plucking the animals from the pilings is much easier -- and environmentally friendly -- than searching for them in reefs, which sometimes become destroyed in the process. Shade from the platforms above prevents seaweed from growing and therefore less competition for nutrients, allowing the critters to grow faster than normal.

Gaines and colleagues are searching for new anti-inflammatory drugs and cancer cures.

Canadian company makes BioOil from lumber waste

Imagine producing 15 million barrels of oil per year for turbines, diesel engines and boilers from five or six million tons of sawmill waste. DynaMotive Technologies Corp., of Vancouver, Canada has done just that. They produce BioOil from scrap bark that would normally be taken to landfills or incinerated.

BioOil is clean burning, low in emissions, greenhouse gas neutral and can be produced economically from forest wastes.

For more information visit: <www.egroups.com/files/ RunningOnEmpty/>.