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Next > No Shortage of Oil Predictions of oil supplies drying
up within a few years have been common over the last 150 years, despite estimates
of the total amount of oil resources still in the ground continually growing throughout
the 20th century. In 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the world's
total store of oil amounted to 60 billion (60B) barrels. In 1950, the world's total
oil endowment was estimated at around 600B barrels. From 1970 through 1990, the
estimates increased to between 1,500B and 2,000B barrels. In 1994, the U.S. Geological
Survey raised the estimate to 2,400B barrels, and the 2000 estimate was of a 3,000B-barrel
endowment. This is possible because the world's oil endowment is much larger than
its oil reserves, which are identified resources that can be economically extracted
and refined using current technology. As new technologies increase the amount of
recoverable oil, and market prices encourage new exploration and development, the
world's total endowment goes up. That does not even include unconventional oil resources
like oil shales, for example, which could easily be as large as 14,000B barrels.
More than 500 years of oil supply are now known to exist at 2000 production rates,
and does not include other fossil fuels, such as natural gas and coal. |
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