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

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