Alroy Commentary - Will we consume all the oil in the world one day?
The world population has experienced continuous growth since Year 1350. From Year 1900 to 2000, world population expanded from 1.65 billion to 6 billion. According to the calculation from the United States Census Bureau, world population will even reach 9 billion in Year 2046. With limited resources in the earth, some people worry we will consume all the oil in the near future and many modern facilities which rely on oil will cease to operate.
Is this likely to happen? We do not think so. You can imagine, limited oil supply (or oil reserves) with high oil demand will send the oil price to sky high. In facing high oil price, energy users will seek for alternatives such as wind energy and nuclear energy to replace oil, and invest for energy efficient products to reduce the total oil consumption. Thus, high oil price will curtail the oil demand.
High oil price will turn some unprofitable projects in oil companies become profitable (Because the oil price is higher than the extraction cost now). You may know Saudi Arabia is the largest oil export country with the second largest oil reserves in the world. However, you may not know oil in Canada is 10 times more than Saudi Arabia. Most of the oil reserves in Canada are in the form of oil sands and oil sands are more expensive to extract. However, if the price is high enough, oil companies are very likely to extract oil from Canada’s oil sands and increase the oil supply.
High oil price will increase the oil discovery as oil companies are more willing to explore the new oil reserves in some high cost areas. In 1980, geologist estimated the total oil reserves in the world were 645 billion barrels. However, the latest figure in 2008 was 1300 billion barrels, and we consumed 700 billion barrels in these periods.
So, you do not need to worry about human will consumer all oil in the world. However, energy saving is still important: do not forget human can destruct the world before we consumed all the oil.
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