Dr. Conca opines that oil is more plentiful than we all imagined. And we keep figuring out easier and more economical ways to get it out of the ground, but what are we going to do with it in the future? In 1938, the famous geologist M. King Hubbert the editor [whom MDC of I2M WP was pleased to have met after picking him up at the Houston airport for one an invited lecture to the academic community at Rice University in the mid-1970s, and whom was admittedly thrilled to finally ride in an XKE Jaguar] came up with the concept of peak oil, which is defined as having extracted half of the recoverable, conventional oil reserves. After that, oil production declines and cannot keep up with growing demand as the population continues to rise.
In Hubbert time, most of the conventional oil reserves had already been discovered. Hubbert went on to predict that U.S. production would peak in 1969, and it did appear to peak in 1970. World reserves were supposed to peak around 2010 However, about 20 years ago, the industry has made significant progress on the technologies to find oil (and gas) and to extract them, particularly via hydraulic fracking. This changed everything. Spencer Dale of BP summed it up nicely that for every barrel of oil consumed over the past 35 years, two new barrels have been discovered. And this shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. Peak oil has probably moved out a hundred years or more. While we talk about decreasing our fossil fuel use, it is easy to forget that humans find it really hard not to use the resources they have. And we have a lot of oil. And gas. And coal. In fact, the U.S. has more oil, gas and coal together than any other country in the world. Read on ... but we do not have to burn it, as Campbell, et al., (2014) suggested about coal. Other important, climate friendly uses may be found for oil (and gas). See: http://i2mconsultants.com/downloads/corp/CampbellJustNotforBurning-July19-2014Col.pdf
Original URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/03/02/no-peak-oil-for-america-or-the-world/#d92ffe84220a
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