Reports of Oil's Death Greatly Exaggerated
In 1874, the chief geologist for the state of Pennsylvania had some bad news. He said that if people insisted on using oil lamps to light their houses, U.S. oil fields would run dry by 1878. A century later, U.S. oil fields had produced more than 150 billion barrels of crude oil. We didn't run out of oil in 1878, or in 1978. Does anybody know when we will run out?
In a report by the International Energy Agency in Paris released last March, geologists estimated there are 1.5 trillion barrels of oil left on Earth. John Edwards, a researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder, reckoned that 2 trillion barrels of oil exist in known and undiscovered deposits. Either estimate would be enough oil to last through the next century, but as the Pennsylvania geologist found out in 1874, it's not easy to predict what we can't see, and crude oil deposits trapped within different types of rock are almost impossible to quantify.
"All we're doing is guessing," said Wes Wallace, a professor of geology at the Geophysical Institute. "As we learn more, the guesses get better, but they're never going to be precise. There's lots of oil, but getting it out at an affordable price is the major controlling factor."
The type of crude oil that in large part fuels Alaska's economy is made up of the remains of prehistoric creatures and plants. The critters and algae that are now crude oil lived millions to hundreds of millions of years ago. After they died and their remains were subjected to pressure from the rocks above and heat from the inner earth, the mess cooked for a few million years or so and eventually became crude oil.
Because it takes so long for crude oil to develop, it's a non-renewable resource. Once oil is gone, it's gone. Analysts for the American Petroleum Institute projected that the world's oil supply will allow production to continue at today's rates at least to the year 2050.
New technology is the major reason the oil deadline keeps getting pushed back. Wallace said that during the past 10 years, dramatic improvements in technology--such as 3-D seismic surveys, horizontal drilling, and drilling in deeper water--have made it possible both to produce more oil from known fields and to discover and produce new fields.
The need for new oil is fueled by the world's dependence on the substance for everything from gasoline to the clingy plastic that wraps our sandwiches. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the United States used 18.6 million barrels each day in 1997. A barrel equals 42 gallons, so Americans used 781 million gallons of crude oil per day in 1997. The EIA also calculated that in 1997 Americans used 25 barrels of oil per person per year. That means every man, woman and child used more than 1,000 gallons of crude oil that year, the rough equivalent of eighteen 55-gallon drums of crude oil for each person.
Where's all that oil coming from? According to the Oil & Gas Journal and the U.S. Geological Survey, the Middle East has by far the largest oil reserves, at about 666 billion barrels. North America is thought to have about 106 billion barrels, and Eastern Europe, including Russia, has about 104 billion barrels that are now thought to be recoverable. North America and the Middle East also are the areas that analysts think have the largest undiscovered reserves, estimated at 121 billion and 122 billion barrels, respectively.
Sounds as if oil lamps won't run dry in the near future.
