I'm with Merle on this one. It's been
decades since we've found more oil than we've consumed. The last time we found about as much as we consumed was back in 1990. Since then we're burning more and more oil, and discovering less and less.
Today we're burning oil our grandparents discovered. That black line is consumption, the grey bars going way down is past discovery.
Even
National Geographic is not that hopeful about fracking replacing the difference long term, and says you'll only get a few years. Poor fracking, we were only just getting to know (and truly hate) you!
Or, as
this geophysicist says, it goes down fast AND the 'resource' present in a field is not necessarily the estimated ultimate recovery, because what you extract depends on economics.
Firstly, shale oil requires continuous drilling as the production of wells declines rapidly (with typically about 50-60 % of production during the first year of production).......
....Worldwide the level of debt of the energy industry stands at a record high of $2.5 trillion at a time that the value of assets backing these loans stands at a record low. The day of reckoning may be postponed but one day it will come.
Peak oil is a thing. I found out about it way back in 2004, which was a really tough period in my life because my wonderful 5 year old boy was having chemo for Leukaemia. Being the primary carer in hospital, I wasn't really getting enough sleep or able to care for myself normally. And yet the implications of peak oil were so awful I burned the candle at both ends, even during that difficult time! I wrote articles on it for Christian websites and magazines, and could not just forget about it. I formed a group that presented material to minority parties in the NSW parliament! It became a part of my ethical framework as a Christian.
What right does this generation have to burn up all the oil? What are we going to do if it starts to run down? What are we going to do because we are literally eating fossil fuels, and
it takes 10 calories of oil and gas energy to grow 1 calorie of food energy?
The good news is that I am
firmly convinced we have the technology to replace oil and will have cleaner cities as a result. It's just the timing. We've left it so late, are we facing a Greater Depression? What drastic emergency measures will we face? I've compiled some of them here: what if we face a really
Sudden oil crisis