There are 1.65 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves in the world as of 2016.
The world has proven reserves equivalent to 46.6 times its annual consumption levels. This means it has about 47 years of oil left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves).
This means that the oil is going to run out in our lifetime
Source/more reading: https://www.worldometers.info/oil/
Update: It is infact not true (or just partially true), because it only considers already known oil reserves that can be pumped out with current technology.
There is more oil that can potentially be used as technology and infrastructure advances, so the estimate of 50 years is wrong.
For the correction thanks to [email protected] (their original comment)
At the current rate of oil consumption there are only 15 years left in the world. So it’s fine.
“The report says we can release 565 more gigatons of co2 without the effects being calamitous.” “It says we can only release 565 gigabytes.” “So what if we only release 564?” “Well, then we would have a reasonable shot at some form of dystopian post-apocalyptic life, but the carbon dioxide in the oil that we’ve already leased is 2795 gigatons so…”
Point being, we already have oil we haven’t burned yet that will shoot us far past any limits we’ve pretended we’ll adhere to, and yet we’re still looking for more oil to dig up. How can this end well?
The disconnect between the general public and the realities of the petroleum industry may be the largest gap in existence. Pretty much any article you read gets 99% of the info hilariously wrong as the journalist has no idea wtf they’re talking about.
I remember when they said there were 30 years left in the '90s.
By 2050, there might even be 70 years of oil left!
Yeah, not trying to poke holes, but I was hearing “less than 50 years left” when I was in school in the 2000s. I do remember seeing a post here and there about new oil reservoirs being discovered but never any follow up. So I suppose that could be stretching things out. But oil use certainly hasn’t decreased in the last 25 years.
What’s the implication? Invest in oil barrels?
No, I think quite the opposite. I learned this recently and I was quite surprised no one ever uses this as one of the arguments for renewable sources of energy.
Because why invest in an industry that is basically declining and wouldn’t be around after 50-60 years.
People have been using this as an argument for renewables since what? The 70s oil crisis? As new ways to access hydrocarbons got discovered the horrified realization was that there are plenty of reasons to bail on those faster than they run out, unfortunately. The issue isn’t that we’ll run out, it’s the amount of damage we’ll cause until that point.
And also, it’ll take much longer to run out, but others have mentioned that already.
This thread is interesting to me mostly as a periodic reminder that culture wars have shorter memories than one would think. People forget hotly contested issues and the public opinion battle lines around them at a horrifying pace. You’d think it has to do with old people dying and new people growing up, but it’s a lot faster than that.
It’s because it isn’t true. We don’t go looking unless it’s needed.
Consider especially huge infrastructure like refineries, pipelines, shipping terminals, that take many years to break a profit. Why would anyone build those anymore?
At this point, new exploration and drilling too. I don’t know how long it takes for those to be profitable, but if countries follow through with EV and other targets for renewable energy, we should expect a huge surplus and price drops in less than a decade
Oil barrel recycling
I’ll be 91. I’m sure I’ll have bigger problems by that point.
…such as having been dead for the past 49 years!
Congrats on reaching 91!
Shiiit, 1985 to 2075? That’s a long life
Honestly we’ve known peak oil would occur in our lives for several decades. Not that you could tell by any project to prepare for such an event.
I was curious how best to cut down on our usage, if we’d be aggressive, how long we could make our oil last.
From the EPA, seems the like roughly 40% of an oil barrel ends up being used to create gasoline source. The transportation sector accounts to 2/3 of our total oil consumption. In the transportation sector, roughly 54% of energy is used just for passenger cars. source
If everyone in the world stopped driving gasoline cars and switched to a 100% renewable option, we would only cut our oil production by about 36%. That changes the timeline from 50 years to 78 years.
Pretty saddening to think about. Hopefully some technology improvements for oil recycling come around quickly
I wish this was true so that there would be a hard limit to within this century, on how much ff related damage we will do.
Unfortunately, they are still finding more, particularly in the north. How much yet-to-be-proven oil still out there is what really should be considered along with technology improvements that increase how much oil can be effectively recovered.
Oooh I didn’t think about that… I’ll update the post
The reason for the 50 years of oil, as I heard it explained, is that this is how far ahead the oil companies plan. They look for enough oil to cover the timeframe they plan for. When they have that covered, they don’t look, until they need more. When they need more, they go and find it.
Not to mention the vast reserves known to be in Antarctica.
That treaty is only going to last so long before people start getting desperate and start fighting over it.
I believe prices will increase dramatically long before we actually run out. Any non-critical usage of plastics and petroleum products will be phased out for economic forces if nothing else.
Yeah don’t bother thinking about the future. The market will sort it out. Just go buy some shit.
It actually gives me hope that there’s a chance we’re going to do something about it.
The trick is figuring out how to make that happen. Today.
You could easily argue that practically non-existent passenger trains and slow adoption of EVs in the US is primarily caused by cheap gasoline. Maybe if we fixed prices to be higher, we’d be able to make the progress we need
I believe gasoline is indeed heavily subsidized. I always thought that was a strange choice.
I was in Norway a few days ago and I was impressed how pretty much all the vehicles I saw were EVs and that the bus system appeared to be relatively efficient.
I heard the same thing 30 years ago.
There are still unproven reserves waiting to be discovered.
Under the Arctic. Underneath the seabeds in the deep oceans. Probably other places that are hard to get to right now.
The question that really needs to be asked is not can we find more oil, we absolutely can and will seek it out. We should ask, can the environment that we live in support more burning of even more oil? We all know that answer, that’s why we’re cutting our emissions down rapidly. /s
The environment that we live in is more fertile now that we’ve got more CO2 in the atmosphere.
More people die of cold than of heat.
I’d say our environment is A-OK with us burning oil.
I genuinely don’t understand what you mean. Fertile how? It’s pretty obvious global temperatures are increasing, heat related deaths are more common in areas that previously weren’t an issue. Catastropic environmental events seem to happen every couple months.
You have an article you can share because it sounds like a bad take
These are healing hurricanes!
Fuck off, Ben Garrison
Fertile for what though? It’s true there is more greening in some places, but that doesn’t equate to a better world for humans and animals used to the previous climate. Plants are better at adapting to this, for now anyway.
The fertility of the soil that I brought up isn’t even about CO2.
Fun fact, with climate change you can get both cold and heat deaths. Warming of the Earth doesn’t mean just heat.
Need to get outside of that echo chamber of climate denial. Oh right, you all have mostly moved on from denial to “it’s fine”. I forget the talking points sometimes. Harder to keep up with those than the facts.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a month, and I heard donald trump talk.
The amount discovered in each of the last three years has been less than a year’s worth of consumption. The global consumption rate is still rising. At some point we will necessarily run out. The lack of readily available reserves has already lead to “innovations” like fracking, oil sands, and deep sea extraction. Those techniques weren’t profitable when production is easy, but they have delayed the inevitable.
I fully expect to see solar powered wells extracting oil that otherwise has a negative EROI in my lifetime.
I’ve heard this for my whole life. Oil runs out in X years, until they develop affordable ways to dig deeper and get at more
Cheapest oil runs out in x years. Mid cost in y years. Expensive in z years. Then we get into “manufactured” oils.
Oil isn’t going to run out, it’s just going to get more expensive.
They’ve been saying this for 50 years at least.
There was 50 years worth of oil left 20 years ago too
Glad you already learned this is probably nonsense. The wrong reasoning is very similar to much thought about overpopulation. The amount of people that makes for a place to be overpopulated is a function of how societies work and the technologies they have at hand. One extra issue there is that improvements in technology usually lead to population growth, so much progress gets cancelled out.
