How long will the Earth's current supply of gasoline/fossil fuels last?

Question

How long will the Earth's current supply of gasoline/fossil fuels last?

Answer 1

No one knows, anyone who claims they do is either an idiot or a charlatan.  People like this have been claiming the end of oil for at least 40 years.

Answer 2

The real ques. is will there be enough OXYGEN to burn all the oil?  Oxygen is a finite resource !

Answer 3

No one truly knows but the estimated guess is at least 500 more years at the least.

Answer 4

Nobody knows because we don't know how many undiscovered deposits still exist and we don't know the rate that it will be used in the future. I think it is safe to say that the future demand will be higher than today's and that not many undiscovered deposits exist, but nobody really can say exactly. Less than 100 years for oil and less than 500 years for coal would be my guess, but that is all it is, a guess.

Answer 5

No we only extracted over 50% of the easily recoverable oil resources.

Some reserves are still unknown and exploration is going on.

Nevertheless, the range for oil availability is decreasing even if we find a lot of new fields. Why ? Because the demand is increasing quite strongly.

Also modern technologies allow to extract oil on extreme conditions (very deep offshore).

Actually a lot of hydrocarbons are available, not only regular coal or oil... but products we haven´t even started to exploit. For example, there are a lot of oilsands and a lot of hydromethane in oceans beds (methan as ice under the high pressures and low temperatures).

Regarding oil, we have enough for 50 years but the problem is that there is only so much that is recovered and the demand is so strong... it is going to be mostly a problem of price

We also have over 300 years of coal to supply the world with energy.

So you see, we have plenty of fossil fuels

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THE ONLY PROBLEM IS: if we burn all of them, we release all the carbon which was bound there since millions of years... and we might return to such levels of temperature we had back then: +10°C...

It might be good for reptiles, not for humans

Answer 6

They will never run out.  They will become more expensive as supplies dwindle.  This will force a reduction of demand and will render many alternatives cost effective.

Answer 7

Geoligists believe we have only exhausted half of the known oil fields at the present time. This would last another 40 years at the current rate of consumption. However there will be serious consequences for our car driven worldwide economy when demand catches up with supply.

Answer 8

it's unknown, maybe hundreds or thousands of years...

Answer 9

ok: : " For ever as long that we'd Save Coservation by recycling Energy & Reduce Smog Emission also help others

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Answer 10

They will last forever in a sense.  Even if we use  every last bit of it, the earth is till creating more (pretty slowly though).  As it gets more difficult to find, prices will go up and other forms of fuel will be found so eventually oil will be priced out of the market and people will stop using it.