When will the oil run out? What are we going to do when it does?

Question

I'm told that oil is incredibly important to the world, but is running out. So how long have we got? And then what do we do?

Answer 1

The sooner we run out of oil the better.

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Answer 2

maybe 50 years tops.

we should be driving vehicles much more now using alternate fuels.

i have a few thoughts about what we should be doing NOW to help the burden:

heres a few things i would like to see done.

1. part of registration costs (or petrol/gas tarrifs) would go into carbon offset. plant the amount of trees that it would take replace the carbon you've put in the air.

2. free internet access to those riding in trains. you could spend on hour on the trains and get an hours work done. or play WOW online if you must.

3. start some sort of incentive car pool system allowing free fuel and/or servicing and/or registration of your vehicle if you regularly use your car to pool with. and the better the car is environmentally the more reward you would receive.

4. free parking to those that are doing the right thing by the planet. imagine a situation where you are the driver of a effecient car of some type, driving more than just yourself to work and having free parking (and tolls dammit!) and other benefits to encourage forward thinking behaviour.

research is being done all the time but with not enough headway.

manufacturers have sat on the face for to long and it seems only toyota, honda and bmw have actively worked toward a solution. toyota and honda opting for a hybrid system where the beemers look towards fuel cell technology.

i think fuel cell will have to be the future solution as of course crude oil will dry up inevitably as indicated by soaring fuel costs. the problems though is infratrsuture.  we have to be looking at getting these 'fuel cell stations' set up now in order to save our transport system.

and how are the ones putting a stop to this? think about it...

Answer 3

there is know way to tell because oil is made over millions of years so there could be some being made deep within the earth right now. also when oil runs out people will finally learn to use renewable reasorces that don't pollute as much. but chances are we as in this generation will be long dead and gone.

Answer 4

Oil will not completely "run out" anytime soon, but as more people want it and the supply gets less and less the price will go so high it will become  too expensive for most people to buy unless we have alternate fuels.

The good news is we do have alternate fuels. We can make oil from coal using what is known as the The FischerTropsch process. The USA has enough coal to supply our needs for 150 years. It costs about 2.50 per gallon to make gasoline or diesel from coal. That was too expensive to do when you could buy oil for less than a dollar per gallon but lots of people are now investing in coal companies to do it.  The is one problem. The process makes double as much carbon dioxide as petroleum fuels and carbon dioxide is a greenhouse  gas.

There are other alternatives such as oil sands in Canada. That is simply oil mixed with sand. It was never worth separating the oil from the sand because it costs more than 2 dollars per gallon to do it, but now that oil has got more expensive there are many companies starting to do it. Canada has more oil mixed with sand than exists in the entire middle east.

We have already run out of cheap oil, but we will be able to have oil at todays prices or slightly higher for many many years.

Answer 5

Accessible oil won't "run out" for another two or three decades but demand is just starting to outstrip supply so the price is rising. The era of easy oil (drill a hole, pump it out) is over and every year that goes by from now on it will get more and more expensive because it will demand more and more sophisticated and expensive technologies to find it and bring it to the market. It's a question of whether we can find a viable, economical alternative and build the global infrastructure it will need before the petrol pumps run dry and the lights go out.

Answer 6

Most of the easy oil is almost gone, the remaining oil is getting harder and harder to find, so say 60 years of oil left. There are many alternates to oil; there isn’t going to be one solution to the problem by many little ones. For fuel you could be looking at algae oil converted into bio-diesel. The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles, which is about the size Maryland. Algae can also grow on marginal lands, such as in desert areas and wouldn’t be taking away crop land, unlike alcohol. Funny but much of the work was done in the 1970’s by the US government, they found some algae’s produce 50% of their weight in oil, there is also a strain of algae that produces and oil that can be used to make gasoline, jet fuel, etc. But the price of oil wasn’t high enough to make it worthwhile but with oil at $100+ per barrel, it may be on its way. By the way the oil yield per unit area of algae is estimated to be 5,000 to 20,000 gallons per acre, per year.

Also don’t forget solar, wind, wave, all have a place in solving the problem, once the cost is competitive you’ll see more and more of them.

Answer 7

Not for a long long time, and when it does there are other sources we can turn to such as:

Oil shale

Coal

Including these, hydrocarbon fuels have a very long future ahead of them.

Answer 8

We have enough to last several more generations but we will cease our dependence on it very shortly. We will find alternative fuel sources and they will replace all the gas engines in use.

The real question is what will the Arab nations do when we switch out? They can't drink their oil and they have no alternate means of support so they will go back to being Bedouins and roaming the desert looking for water and food or will die out. Their economy depends on oil to keep them going. No demand for oil and they will go broke and then what?

Who will they blow up when we leave them to die?

Answer 9

Experts disagree on how long we can rely on oil. They do not disagree on when the easy oil will no longer be easy. We may find more but it will not likely be cheaper than todays oil. Even if we had enough oil in other countries, they tend to control our future. We need to make a war like effort to become independent and we need to start now.

What will we do when it is clear that someone has it and we need it? What did we do in Iraq? Can anyone spell "wore?" How many of the oil producing countries really like the USA?

Answer 10

The oil will never run out because the Earth has a built in recycle system. It is the plants that convert the CO2 to O2 for us,but the plants keeps the C for its own food and when the plants leaves die they will become oil.

Answer 11

I think that an alternative will be found just like some of the other answers. But we should always conserve when we can, for two reasons the environment and not being wast full. There is a problem that I see that the Federal government is not helping address this problem in small ways. I remember back in the early 70 s When the Feds  passed the 55mph speed limit. It not only saved gas  but it saved lives. Any State that didn't want to participate didn't get Federal highway money. Now the gas is where it is at, I see there is states out there that have speed limits 70 mph (Michigan) and 85mph (Texas). We could all learn from the past but never do.

Answer 12

Why do you think oil prices are going up and up.  The simplest answer is probably the right one.  We have passed our peak oil production in the world and it will never be the same again.

Answer 13

Nobody knows when peak oil (the time where maximum oil output has been reached and will only decrease from that point) will be reached.  Some hypothesize that it will be very soon - within the next few decades.  Some think that we still have 50-100 years left.  Some believe that we've already reached peak oil.

Whatever the case, if we do not come up with an alternative resource, the world will probably plunge into chaos as the more powerful countries attempt to gather and store as much oil as possible.

Answer 14

we will have oil for another 500 years easy

312 years of oil left in oil shale

do the math we consume 57 billion barrels a year (America)

there are 18000000000000 barrels of oil left in oil shale ALONE

there are 32000000000000 barrels in oil sand around the world

did you know Saudi  has the most oil ...Canada is second!

trust me oil will be around for ever