[dashster]

BP said in June that the world has 53.3 years worth of consumption available as oil reserves. They say that is 1,687.9 billion barrels, which divided by 53.3 gives 31.67 barrels used annually. That's the good news. The bad news is that according to a pie chart at Wikipedia,



only 30% of that is regular oil (although fracking oil must be in there as well). 30% of 53.3 years is 15.99 years. 15.99 years of conventional oil in reserve doesn't sound that great.

[forbin]

I don't think even 53 years is much

last month someone posted we have 117 years

thats not long either

and at what price ? $40 per barrel or $110 ?

Forbin

[Pops]

I've tried to make the point for a long time that while we may have 50-60-howevermany years of supply at "the current rate of production," the entire point of peak oil is that current production levels are at or at least close to peak levels. That means the production rate will fall off over time as the old giant reservoirs are drained, leaving us scratching for the dregs: the x-heavy, tar, etc which don't readily flow but must be wrestled from the ground in what is essentially a mining and manufacturing process.

The good news is oil will be around much longer than 53 years and won't stop overnight.
The bad news is the "current rate of production" will stop overnight

[dashster]

I don't think even 53 years is much

So true. I suspect that if you asked the elite whether or not we would be prepared for no oil in 53 years they would all say yes. But by yes they mean, "I will be dead, so don't care and certainly don't want to lower my income now in order to help people in the future".

[Tanada]

I don't think even 53 years is much

So true. I suspect that if you asked the elite whether or not we would be prepared for no oil in 53 years they would all say yes. But by yes they mean, "I will be dead, so don't care and certainly don't want to lower my income now in order to help people in the future".

It is not just the elites who think that way, it is the vast majority of humans alive at any time.

[GHung]

Net energy and EROI are all that matter. There is perhaps a billion years worth of current consumption of natural gas on Titan. So what? Worth going after from an economic and thermodynamic standpoint?

If it takes more energy to catch a rabbit than you get from eating that rabbit, eventually you'll starve. The rabbit ain't worth fooling with. Most of this oil will fall into the same category.

[GregT]

"BP said in June that the world has 53.3 years worth of consumption available as oil reserves. They say that is 1,687.9 billion barrels, which divided by 53.3 gives 31.67 barrels used annually. That's the good news. The bad news is that according to a pie chart at Wikipedia......"

The really bad news, is that we can't afford to burn a large percentage of those reserves, if we hope to avert a runaway greenhouse event.

Running out of fossil fuels will be a game changer for modern industrial society, not running out will be a game changer for all life on Earth.

[ROCKMAN]

""BP said in June that the world has 53.3 years worth of consumption available as oil reserves". And to emphasize again the point that Pops makes: this is an absolutely meaningless statement on several levels. First, it hinges on IF we can produce it at the current rate of consumption. And that's a completely indefensible assumption. Second, the amount of COMMERCIAL recoverable reserves is a function of the price of the commodity. A price which has from the beginning of the fossil fuel age fluctuated wildly. Thus any reserve number will also fluctuate wildly and without an accurate forecast of prices even that bullish*t number can't be estimated. Third, along the same line as #2, if one doesn't know the future cost to extract those reserves then one cannot know at what price the bullish*t reserve number becomes COMMERCIALLY viable.

So to summarize, IMHO of course: World Oil Reserves = BULLSH*T.

[dolanbaker]

Claims for oil reserves are often ludicrous but unprovable as well.

Looks like Venezuela just based their reserves on the amount of resources that are viable at the current price, if so that figure should be now plunging!

[viewcrafters]

If Saudi Arabia could supply the world its 30 billion a year out of its 280 Billion barrels of reserve, They would run out of oil in 8.6 years.
viewcrafters