HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Nov. 28, 2005 Let me start this article off with a few definitions and conversions. A barrel, according to usage in the petroleum industry, equals 42 US gallons. A gallon is 8 quarts or 231 cubic inches. A cubic meter equals 61,024 cubic inches, or about 6.29 barrels, or about 264 gallons A barrel of petroleum yields about 19 gallons of gasoline. According to a table called “Volume of World Petroleum Reserves”, reserves may equal from 1.47 x 10^11 to 1.77 x 10^11 cubic meters, depending on the authority you consult. In ordinary notation, these figures are 147,000,000,000 to 177,000,000,000 cubic meters. Multiplying these figures by 6.29 barrels per cubic meter, we see that reserves are somewhere between 925,000,000,000 and 1,113,000,000,000 barrels, that is, between 925 billion and one trillion, one hundred thirteen billion barrels. There’s a typographical error in the table whose URL is shown below: in the second box of the top row “1,114.7 billion” should read “1,114.7 trillion.” Otherwise, the figures agree closely with estimates from all sides. I’ve been over these figures several times in the past few years. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/EvanAbel.shtml According to statistics of the United States Energy Information Administration, world petroleum consumption in the year 2003 amounted to 80,098,800 barrels a day, which comes to around 29,236,000,000 barrels a year. So dividing the most pessimistic and most optimistic estimates of world petroleum reserves, as calculated above, by consumption figures from USEIA, we find that the oil will run out, in the worst-case scenario, in 31.6 years, and, in the best-case scenario, in 38.1 years. There may additional sources of petroleum in tar sands and oil shale, but oil from these sources is difficult of extraction, and may not increase reserves by any more than a few percentage points, in any case. In 1997, when I first got interested in these figures, it looked as if petroleum reserves might suffice for about 50 years, but some people seemed to think that thitherto undetected reserves might be much greater than supposed. How could anyone know that additional trillions of barrels would not be detected? Of course, this verges on wishful thinking. Now recently, I’ve noticed that some people are saying that not only are the estimates not overly pessimistic, but also that they are overly optimistic. In other words the supposed 31-to-38 year backlog might be even smaller. Can it be that the world might run out of oil in 20 or 25 years? I personally have no way of knowing, but I think the overall picture is rather gloomy. A bright note is that large reserves of methane clathrate have been discovered under the sea. To date, these reserves, perhaps ten times as great as natural gas reserves, have not been exploited systematically, because of technical difficulties, but China and Japan are conducting research and exploration. I learned recently, also, that uranium reserves, once held to suffice for about 50 years too, are, in fact, virtually unlimited. However, the main source of the vast reserves of uranium is seawater, and extraction is very costly. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
