X-Message-Number: 28357 From: "Mark Plus" <> Subject: Re: Nanotech, space elevator and wealth Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 08:43:26 -0700 David Stodolsky writes, >According to the original Peak Oil hypothesis, oil should have been used up by now. Fortunately, proven reserves are at their highest level in history, having doubled in the last 25 years. No, the Peak Oil thesis predicts that we'd use up half of the world's recoverable oil by now, not all of it. Although M. King Hubbert originally developed this idea in the 1950's, other scientists around the time made similar predictions. For example, this paper from 1964 forecasts a peak in production a little after the year 2000, assuming total recoverable reserves in the world of 1.5 trillion barrels: http://www.civil.ubc.ca/faculty/RMillar/PDFs/World_of_Oil_1964.pdf Today's estimates for total recoverable oil reserves (extracted from the first oil wells in the 1850's until the indefinite future) fall into the 2 trillion barrel range, which show that reserves certainly haven't "doubled" in the past 25-40 years despite all the advances in probing the interior of our planet for mineral resources. (So much for the alleged power of Moore's Law.) Currently 20 percent of the world's oil comes from about 14 super-giant fields that all went online decades ago and most of which have already peaked. The Saudis sit on Ghawar, the biggest oil field ever discovered, which supplies 5-6 percent of the world's oil but which for complicated geological reasons could lose pressure any time now. And the Saudis don't want to talk about the problems they have keeping Ghawar in production. The world's second and third largest fields, Mexico's Cantarell and Kuwait's Burgan, have both definitely entered decline. Prudhoe Bay ranks as number 9, BTW. BP's problems with the Prudhoe pipeline also underscore the fact that much of the world's oil infrastructure dates from the 1970's and before and now nears the end of its useful life. Manage your risk, not your terror. Mark Plus Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28357