Energy of our futureWhen the oil runs out [Archives:2004/794/Business & Economy]
By Shaker al-Molsi
Yemen Times Staff
Oil is the sinews of the modern life, providing the world with power. It supplies fuel for factories, heavy and light industries and generates electricity. Not only that, oil derivatives are used to make a diversity of products including clothes. Oil is also the raw material of many plastic products.
Unfortunately, this valuable substance which has been relatively recently introduced into man's life is going to be exhausted. This is a prediction based on up-to-date studies. People in the oil industry confirm this end and show their apprehension of the future. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) is sending warnings on this issue, and so do many other experts, for governments to make precautions before it is too late.
What is the oil peak?
Demand continues to rise but oil reserves are becoming exhausted. Thus within the coming few years, the era of cheap unlimited energy is expected to come to a close. This phenomenon is known as “peak oil production” or “oil depletion”. In other words, peak oil indicates that we have consumed as much as half of the total oil reserves and that we are going down the curve.
Industry consultants IHS Energy recently reported that 85 percent of all the oil ever discovered is now in production, and only half the total produced last year was replaced by new field discoveries. Annual consumption has now exceeded new discoveries every year since the early 1980s. Overall worldwide oil discoveries have been declining steadily for the past 40 years and data shows that the volume of oil consumed by mankind annually equals 1.07 cubic miles, while estimated worldwide oil reserves at the beginning of 2004 equals 34 cubic miles.
This means the world has 34 years of oil left at current rats of consumption. But the world's demand for oil and natural gas continues to increase as industry is expanding and many communities are joining become more industrialized. So a more realistic estimate of the remaining period of the oil era is “25 years,” unless new discoveries of reserves are made.
The problem, however, is not running out of oil as much as it is running out of cheap oil, which is the resource upon which every aspect of industrial civilization is built. Oil plays such a fundamental role in the world economy that we will not run out of the stuff before we run into a crisis of untold proportions.
According to the best estimates of a number of respected international geologists, including the French Petroleum Institute, Colorado School of Mines, Uppsala University and Petroconsultants in Geneva, the world will likely feel the impact of the peaking of most of the present large oil fields and the dramatic fall in supply by the end of this decade, 2010, or possibly even several years sooner. At that point, the world economy will face shocks.
How will it impact the world?
Cheap oil underpins our current lifestyle. It provides cheap transport by car or bus, cheap food, cheap goods, cheap manufacturing, cheap energy, and cheap products. It runs national and international trade.
Increasing demand for oil and less reserves imply paying more for oil which consequently means an increase in the price of almost everything that drives the modern economies. It is the next looming crisis which will effect everything, as energy could get a lot more expensive – affecting where you live, cost of travel, cost of electricity, and even costs of food. Some pessimists claim their will be a vehement struggle for areas rich in energy sources and destruction will take place as well as famines and die-offs due to a decline in the land productivity which depends mainly on oil-powered machinery.
Possible alternatives:
In the face of such a problem, it is necessary for people to focus attention on the possibility of a world far less dependent on oil. There are actually alternatives to oil in case we run out of it. But they are not as efficient and cheap, at least so far.
The world may be forced to get back to basics. Before oil, coal was the bedrock of the industrial revolution. However, coal gives off large quantities of the greenhouse gases, causing climatic changes. Though, technology can help improve the situation, the reserves of coal are also subject to the peak oil effect, that is it is a finite supply which will be gradually more difficult to recover. Shale oil and tar sands represent another source of energy, but it is not economically viable to utilize. Shale oil is essentially unborn oil that can be made into a fuel by strip-mining, crushing, and heating the rocks until you generate a usable liquid. This may be done by the help of heat from nuclear plants but the process may result in pollution and distortion of the landscape.
Some, especially vehicle manufacturers, foresee a change from an oil-based economy to one based on hydrogen as cell fuel. But there are only two commercially viable ways of making hydrogen. One is to make it out of methane, which is a fossil fuel. The other is to use fossil fuel to generate the electricity that you need to electrolyze water and get hydrogen. Yet either ways are energy-negative, meaning that you will always have to put more energy into acquiring and processing it than you will ever get out of it.
The nuclear possibility can yield an incredible amount of energy but in half a century the world's nuclear industry has had at least three serious accidents: Windscale (UK, 1957), Three Mile Island (US, 1979) and Chernobyl (USSR, 1986) were catastrophic. Many people therefore reject new nuclear plants in the belief that more accidents are inevitable. And apart from that, the industry still shows no sign of being able to get rid of its waste in safety.
A third category of fuel comes under the heading of renewables. Solar energy (light from the sun) has proved itself to be a good source for electricity. However, not all places are sunny and the solar cells are relatively expensive. More generated electricity needs a larger area of solar panes, which is not convenient. Other renewable sources like hydro-electric power have been tested. Wind and wave power has promise. But there are relatively few places on earth where the wind blows strongly and steadily enough for it to be a dependable energy source. But, how these sources can suitably and sufficiently be made to energize the modern life is still a hurdle.
A glimmer of hope
Many measures should be put into play to avoid the problem of power shortage. People should conserve power. Most of us still waste fuel on a prodigious scale, and the savings we could make by more efficiency, and by just switching off, are immense.
Our hope lies on scientific research and probable solutions to find new sources of power, and improve available ones.
So far it seems that the only possible substitutes for our fossil-fuel dependency are solar power and nuclear energy. The efficient exploitation of nuclear energy depends on man's ability to harness it. Developing a way of running this highly sophisticated civilization on those resources is an enormous challenge. Whether we will be able to cope with it remains to be seen.
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