Milo says:

bs (how appropriate): Peak oil doesn’t mean we don’t find any new reserves, it means we can’t find them as fast as we run out of oil.

http://tinyurl.com/3yg2vl

As of 2005 we peaked, it’s downhill from here. The market tells the tale, spot prices have cracked $70 a barrel recently.

bs says:

#2 The point is the projection is wrong since it already assumes peak oil has happened. Adding new discoveries would keep the clock at leat somewhat more realistic..

But I will excuse you while you panic.

Brubble says:

Anybody remember the “oil crisis” of the early 70’s, when we were told pretty much the same thing?

bill says:

Remember don’t drink all of the grain alcohol! we need some for fuel too!

edwinrogers says:

Oil companies leave reserves underground and loose them, to establish a future competitiveness and to maximize price. See NY Times, February 23, 1977, Business & Finance, Page 72, “House Panel Says Texaco Holds Back Gas Reserves”. “WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (AP) The Texaco Oil Company has reserves in the Gulf of Mexico containing more than 500 billion cubic feet of natural gas but failed to produce from these reservoirs because of its “desire to maximize its profits,” Congressional investigators said today.”

Mark T. says:

Um, when I was in High School back in the late 70’s, they told us that we only had 20 to 30 years of oil left. What happened?

New technology, that’s what. We now have better and more efficient oil drilling systems and more accurate means to detect new reserves. There is no indication to believe that this trend will not continue.

Oh, and we were supposed to be in a new mini ice age by now, too.

Awake says:

In America we should be considering not only the long term availability of oil, but the sources of the resource. Oil is already a rare and much more difficult commodity in the USA than it was just a few years ago, for example in 1950. Oil is now largely in the hands of countries that like us less by the year, countries like every country in the Middle East, Mexico, Venezuela, Russia. We are not only not self-sufficient, we are becoming more dependent on those countries every year.
Opening a relatively small field (in the big scheme of things) in Alaska is not going to help much.
The biggest threat to the USA is not the decreasing amount of oil, it is it’s dependency on foreign sources.
That is why any sensible national energy policy should put at the top of the list a steep decline of oil usage by the USA, so that dependency can be reduced to a manageable or inexistent level.
It is ridiculous that the US government, as a matter of national security, does not mandate an immediate minimum proven mileage of 50 MPG for ALL vehicles sold starting immediately, for both foreign and domestic vehicles. Push the manufacturers and they will deliver.

bobbo says:

and what the counter doesn’t show is the increasing cost of getting to those last barrels of oil. Oil used to bubble up to the surface and was cheap to collect. Now and in the future we need 100 Million dollar rigs with co2 injections to get those last bits of oil.

I gotta go with #5 on this. This much oil is going to kill us all.

Robert says:

We will never run out of oil. It’s a fact of economics.

Over the next several decades–assuming new oil reserves aren’t found–oil prices will continue their upward march. The higher they go, the fewer people and businesses will find it makes sense to use gasoline, and they will switch to alternatives sources of fuel. Over time, more and more specialized users like antique car owners will be the only ones willing to shell out a few days pay for a fill-up.

As the supply dwindles down to the last of the remaining stock, prices will increase so sharply, that just about no one will want any.

Therefore, the interesting question is not when oil will “run out” but how much our lives will be changed as we switch to new sources of energy.

Milo says:

In fact the oil shocks of the 70’s were what threw off Hubbert’s original calculation of peak by about 10 years. Hubbert’s peak was proven correct for individual oil field production and for the production of the US as a whole. The signs are all around that it is now proving out for the world.

A year from now gas prices will be double what they are now and no doubt the same lot of troglodytes will be mindlessly repeating oil companies press releases.

BubbaRay says:

Too bad the clock is just that — a clock, with no regard to consumption increases / decreases or new discovery / production.

At least it could make folks think about what we’re doing though I dispute the data — 30 years my foot. Even so, those new solar panels with efficiency above 40% are looking better and better.

Keep us thinking, Hop.

http://www.runet.edu/~wkovarik/oil/

Brad Bishop says:

If you do a little research, people were thinking we’d run out back in 1930. It’s always one of those things that just 10 or so years away. It’s refreshing that this one is 30.

1980 I was being told in elementary school that we’d effectively be out of oil by 1990.

It doesn’t matter. The market wins on this: As oil becomes less plentiful it’s price will go up and new forms of energy will become viable. It does happen. We went from candles to that new alternative energy ‘oil’ to that new alternative energy ‘electricity’. It just has to become economically viable to do so.

Yeah Right says:

The 30 years is actually very generous compared to what I’ve read in research, which gives at most 25years and they said it was generous.

Besides, why not plan on having no oil now rather then when the last drop hits the garage floor and nothing has been implemented yet, bad idea.

Do you suppose all that oil, inside the earth where all the continental plates moving about scraping off opne another, was actually there for a reason? Is the lack of oil going to begin massive internal erosion and heat buildup from friction? The earth begins to implode slowly where the greatest erosion is?

Yikes! What are YOUR thoughts?

Matthew says:

I call bs. In 1980 no one credible was claiming we would run out of oil in 10 years.

YeahRight says:

I’m sorry but isn’t technology supposed to change our way of using oil. Like people don’t care if their car uses 55 gallons as long as we know how many miles per gallon we can do.

This is just like in the 70s…history repeats itself again.