Peak oil

Peak oil is the theoretical point when peak global oil production will have been reached. According to some scientists, global oil production will begin an irreversible decline and less oil will be available with every passing year. Most energy experts no longer debate about whether the peak will occur, but when.

Global oil production will peak sometime between 2008 and 2018 and then decline, according to a controversial new model developed Swedish University of Uppsalla physicist Fredrik Robelius. According to a recent U.S. Government GAO report, world oil production will peak between now and 2040

Additional oil resources

Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research, an energy consultancy firm that works for oil companies, says "Not much can be said about additional oil resources because we haven't really started looking for them yet." There is likely to be a lot of oil in as-yet undiscovered smaller fields. It is likely that one of the moons of Saturn, Titan, contains a large quantity of liquid hydrocarbon.

New Technologies

New technologies could help solve extraction problems according to Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a non-profit public policy think tank in Washington, D.C. New technologies have already turned fields that once seemed to be dormant into steady supplies of oil.

Popular and fringe theories

James Howard Kunstler's 2005 book The Long Emergency is a popular book claiming that civilization is doomed during the next couple of decades due to peak oil.

Rejection of theory

Exxon's Australia chief, Mark Nolan, told an industry conference in Adelaide, Australia, that "the end of oil is nowhere in sight." Mr. Nolan cited a U.S. Geological Survey estimate of more than three trillion barrels of conventional recoverable oil resources, of which one trillion barrels has been produced. Conservative estimates of heavy-oil and shale-oil resources push the total to four trillion barrels, while a 10% increase in recoverability will deliver an extra 800 billion barrels according to Nolan.

It should also be noted that this is not a new concept, but has been around in different forms for many years. During the early 1970's in the United States, it was claimed that world oil would run out in 35 years, a claim that never came to pass.

Maybe not "Fossil Fuel"

Thomas Gold at Cornell University, assert that the sources of oil may not be “fossil fuels” in limited supply, but instead abiotic in nature (meaning not produced by a life process). According to Professor Gold, oil is produced by an abiogenic process, deep within the earth. The scientific community has not been eager to affirm this thesis. In fact, they tend to resist it. In 1992 Gold published a paper titled “The Deep Hot Biosphere”, later expanded into a 1999 book of the same name. In this paper he suggested that oil is non-biologically produced, deep within the earth. In other words, oil is not a fossil fuel. The Department of Energy refused to fund his research although both outcomes would have been good - If the research uncovered sources of oil that did not take millions of years to produce, it would be a bonanza for oil companies. If abiogenic petroleum sources are found to be abundant, it would mean Earth contains vast reserves of untapped petroleum. On the other hand, if his research failed, this research proposal will contribute strongly to fundamental science in petroleum engineering. So far, the DOE has refused to fund any of his research because it is counter to the mainstream effort.

External links

• Peak Oil Debunked blog - Debunking peak oil hype with facts and figures, and exposing the agendas behind peak oil.