There are several other reasons why we will never run out of oil.
One is the fact that we know where there are literally thousands of years-worth, at current usages, of barrels of oil. They are called "oil shales" and "tar sands", and the only thing keeping us from using them is the difficulty of extracting hydrocarbons from them. They are not at this time economically viable alternatives to conventional oil sources.
Then, there is also the interesting theory that the same bacteria that originally formed oil are still forming it, though at vastly slower rates than our extraction allows for.
This theory is buttressed by the fact that whenever we extract oil, there is living bacteria in it. The persons who have presented this theory posit that, since the earth was formed from gas and dust, much of that gas still exists at deep levels, and the bacteria down there is continuously eating this gas and forming oil as a metabolic byproduct. This is interesting in its implications, since one of them is that there are near-infinite (for all practical purposes!) quantities of methane down there, and all we have to do is to dig for them.
Thank you for an interesting article.
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Thank you for your kind words,
I must admit I'm far from an expert on oil and gas and drilling technologies. I am skeptical of claims that "we'll run out of oil in X years given current technology" just because technology is always improving, both on the extraction side and on the consumer side. How much oil would have been wasted if the oil companies were still drilling with 1920's technology and nobody drove anything more advanced than the Model-T? I have a feeling if the price of gas does start to edge up due to scarcity that we'll see more efficient engines, just as we did in the late 1970's. If gasoline goes up to $5 a gallon, I'd bet you'd see very few SUVs and a whole lot of hybrid cars. But if we can find a way to economically extract oil from oil shales, we might have cheaper gas for a lot longer than anyone expects. Thanks again,
Mike
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