> At present consumption rates, know reserves will last less than 50 years
But those reserves are growing not shrinking over time. In the 1950s there was only 10 years of known reserves. We need to start worrying when the known reserves start getting smaller, rather than growing over time.
> Now the received wisdom is that we'll have a glut of supply stretching into the far future.
Uh, source? We have a short term glut caused by production picking up, but our long term reserves haven't changed tangibly. There's about 1,324bil barrels in proven reserves (among the largest 17 reserves, ending with brazil at 13bil); global use is 95mb/d -- which is about 38 years of use. That's not 'stretching in to the far future'.
We will run out of oil that is worth extracting, because the cost to extract the next unit will exceed the value provided.
> people are only able to consume it at a measurable declining pace
The pace of global oil consumption has been increasing for a long time, other than a brief period of decline in the late 1970s to early 1980s.
> I bet demand will almost completely fall off long before we get anywhere close to running out.
Over the long term, consumption is going up as are real prices (though the price trend is noisier than consumption.) There's not really consistent with demand declining at all, much ledd heading to the point of completely falling off.
Instead, it shows demand increasing faster than supply.
>And don't try to predict peak oil - every single prediction ever made of it has been wrong. And not just a little bit wrong, wildly incorrect.
Leaving aside that that's a terrible reason to stop even trying to predict something, I haven't found this to be the case at all.
Since about 2000 the date that's been put out was 2004-2006. The recession did indeed delay that a couple years, but we've still never extracted more oil than we did in 2008 despite continued high prices (vs. say the 1979 peak, after which oil prices collapsed).
>Every time we seem to run out of oil or natural gas we find more - known oil reserves have never been higher.
Helped in part by the fact that the OPEC nations (which account for ~80% of those reserves) allocates daily production limits in proportion to known reserves. So the more oil you claim to have, the more oil they let you produce! When the rules changed in the 1980 there was a gold rush of "revisions" that increased global oil reserves by 33%.
Peak oil is not "running out of oil," so the fact that that hasn't happened is not a real argument.
If you honestly believe that a global economy in which oil production has been flat for 4 years despite high prices, in which only 14 of the 54 oil-producing nations are growing production, in which another 30 are in active decline–forcing them to import more oil and more every year just to maintain current consumption (let alone fuel growth)–is a global economy in which peak oil isn't taking place, then I honestly don't know what to say.
> Also I think hitting those price levels is unlikely in any case.
Unless we end up with refinery bottlenecks (like we more or less have now) or political incentives (although the odds of that seem alarmingly low at this point).
> The consumption would be lower so price would be too.
Is this expected to hold as oil usage drops over the next century?
At today's prices. Do you really think oil demand will continue for the next 50-100 years at this level with all this investment in renewables? We're currently at a price slump close to pricing from two decades ago.
Its a little presumptuous to think oil will continue to have this value.
> it would take 220 years to get today's known reserves out of the ground
That doesn't strike me as particularly constrained then - it's highly unlikely known reserves won't expand in that time or that we'll find no alternatives.
"If you look at the US for example for the first time in 30 years. They've been oil reserves. Oil they save for nation security to turn it into profit before it's worthless."
Huh? We've had reserves for practically a century:
> If now wasn't the time to use the strategic oil reserve when exactly was?
the strategic reserve is for times of national defense. As long as it's lowered, we are more vulnerable to expanding threats from Russia and China, with potential disruptions to supply lines.
Otherwise, it's good for our oil prices to fluctuate with the market, things cost what they cost.
The strategic reserve is so we have ready access to oil at any price; it's not big enough to buffer very much of world market consumption.
> Fossil fuels reserves are going to collapse in the coming decades
Source? Quick internet searches seem to say we have more than 50 years left of coal, oil, and natural gas that we know we can extract. And that will expand as we find more and get better at extracting it.
To be clear: we do need to dramatically reduce our fossil fuel usage. Just saying that, so far as I can tell, we're not going to run out of anything in the next 30 years.
> It’s also that oil will be running out sooner or later.
Wondering when that will actually happen. It has been prophesied to have happen multiple times already in the past. And here we go, oil is still there.
> You did not address the reasoning, which is about the fact that the last country on earth with oil reserves will have a strategic advantage.
I agree this is a problem, and hopefully its scale will be much lower in a few decades as we are moving away from fossil fuels. But even if we were consuming them rapidly as we are doing now, we are talking ca. 50 years for oil and natural gas. Whereas the danger from Russia is right now.
In 50 years, OPEC will still have oil even at current consumption. But consumption is shrinking as energy production is already shifting to renewables and cars will have converted to electro/hydrogen by then.
This is a dubious claim.[0] It depends a lot on technology and how hard we look for oil. Which was my point. If we disincentivize O&G exploration there will be less O&G produced. If we force O&G producers to lessen production and then renewables cannot be scaled fast enough there will be an energy supply shortfall that cannot be overcome quickly.
Obviously at some point we will run out of O&G and need to be switched over to renewables (with or without nuclear), but doing it prematurely is risky because of the downstream effects of high energy prices and the fact that every institution in the modern world is premised on ever increasing access to energy.
> otherwise why is the US running down its strategic reserve?
Because it keeps domestic oil prices low which keeps an electorate happy. The government can’t force OPEC to pump more oil at a low price nor can they set prices, but they CAN increase oil supply on the market through reserves.
> I think that true global reserves are much higher than what we know now.
That was certainly true of oil. As reserves got depleted, progressively more advanced techniques allowed people to extract from more difficult locations.
But those reserves are growing not shrinking over time. In the 1950s there was only 10 years of known reserves. We need to start worrying when the known reserves start getting smaller, rather than growing over time.
http://www.scdigest.com/images/misc/World-Oil-Reserves_web_0...
http://www.cheaperpetrolparty.com/Images/World%20Crude%20Oil...
http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/12/opec_reserve_growth.gif
> Markets are slow to transfer information to economic actors when conditions change drastically
Hardly. Prices rise and fall in minutes when there's new information.
Also if the 20th century has taught us anything it's that we need to keep politicans as far away from resource development as possible,
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