Oil running out?

[okiedoke]

What will our country do for when oil becomes scarce?


Does anyone think that someone will develop an alternative resource to oil.

Oil isnt just used to make gas, its used for plastics, pesticides, fertilizers, etc.

So if oil becomes scarce and the price rises a great deal and that would cause all other products to rise greatly, would that put our economy in a deeper depression than we have ever been?

Just something to ponder and discuss.

[ckuehl]

Oil is not going to run out in our lifetime our your kids lifetime.

[DJM]

Oil is not going to run out in our lifetime our your kids lifetime.

And if it does we'll just kill some more dinosaurs and throw them in a pile.

DJ

[Tmag]

Oil is not going to run out in our lifetime our your kids lifetime.

X2 You would be surprised how much oil is down there.

[okiedoke]

Some sources state the US oil reserves are around 21 billion barrels. But sources also say that daily US consumption is 19 million barrels per day.

I understand that the Eastern countries controll the majority supply of oil.

[IowaHunter]

Some sources state the US oil reserves are around 21 billion barrels. But sources also say that daily US consumption is 19 million barrels per day.

I understand that the Eastern countries controll the majority supply of oil.

Working with your values we have a shade over 3 years of reserves. But I'd suspect the "reserves" are quantities sitting in tanks and salt domes.

We have many many years of undiscovered / not yet drilled product underground and undersea (If we were allowed to drill for it).

[J.B.]

We don't need oil.....we have vast reserves of natural gas domestically. We need to start moving towards natural gas as our transportation fuel

[fox1]

Many studies are showing that wells once thought depleted are refilling on there own, who knows how much oil is really down there. Let the environmental nazis keep griving electric cars that just means more diesel for me.

[DPerez905]

Its doesn't really matter how much oil is actually in the ground its how much it costs to get it out of the ground. Thats a big discussion that is goin on now. Oil will always be there but in our future we are goin to have to rely more on natural gas bc of the cost. Its under a cost/benefit analysis to look forward to our future.

[txfireguy2003]

*ETA* I was just informed privately that Mr. Pickens doesn't own any wells. That's news to me, but the person who told me this has a closer insight than I, so I will trust him on it. Therefore, anywhere in my post below that you see Mr. Pickens' name, substitute any other oil man who is now touting the greatness of natural gas.

Natural Gas is a great fuel source, but I have a sneaky suspicion that those touting its greatness have an ulterior motive. Take T. Boone Pickens for example: he was and is an oil man, has billions invested in oil production. Now, a little knowledge of oil production tells you that when you get oil out of a well, you'll generally get some gas out as well, and often, you'll get gas out for a long time after the oil stops flowing. When I worked in crude production, our wells produced enough gas that we ran "cogens" off of the gas we produced. These cogens are basically gas turbine (jet) engines, coupled to a generator that creates electricity. In California, oil wells have to run off of electricity, rather than internal combustion engines like we use in Texas. Our cogens produced enough electricity to run the entire field of 4000+ wells, AND we sold electricity back to the Califonia grids EVERY DAY. In addition to the electricity we generated, we also used the cogens to heat water into steam and pumped the steam back into the wells to aid in oil flow. Add to all that, we STILL had enough gas left over to sell a small amount of it to the gas companies. All that gas, and we were producing OIL! Now, with that said, why do you think Pickens is pushing natural gas so much? His oil wells are beginning to play out, and he knows that if he can get America more hooked on natural gas than we already are, he'll still be making money off of wells that he already has in the ground. I don't fault him for that, he's a businessman, and that's business, but don't accept everything you hear about gas. Pickens is a billionaire, and his main goal is life it to become a trillionaire....nothing wrong with that, but if he had a huge supply of corn available to him at little or no cost, he'd be touting the strengths of ethanol and biodiesel.

[cheez]

They have been saying we are going to run out of oil in 20 or so years since I was a kid, I'm 44 now and keep reading about new discoveries and new techniques to drill that will produce however many millions or billions of barrels. As the supply diminishes the price will go up. When the price goes up it will make some of the unfeasible techniques more cost effective. I'll likely be long dead before there is any real shortage.

[txsteele]

Oil is not going to run out in our lifetime our your kids lifetime.

x2....all kinds of oil that the Gov won't let the oil companies go get. When it becomes scares in 1,000 years, they will change their minds

[Slick8]

We don't need oil.....we have vast reserves of natural gas domestically. We need to start moving towards natural gas as our transportation fuel

Natural gas, I resemble that. I'll fire up my own gas turbine in the back yard.

[kyle1974]

don't buy into the panic... that's exactly what they want you to do by publishing that garabge.

we will never "run out" of oil.... there will come a day in the future when oil is no longer the most economical form of fuel, but it's not like you're going to pull up to the stripes station one day and see an "out of oil reserves" sign on the gas pump.

we will all be traveling in tubes when that day comes anyway.

[47]

Don't believe the hype... doubtful oil will run out in the next couple hundred years.

Contrary to what the green freaks and speculators would have us all believe, all of the oil that has ever been, wasn't simply created in one fell swoop.

Fact of the matter is...there's WAY more than PLENTY... if "they" allowed for more exploration, collecting and refining .... some believe it would crush the word economy.... as "they" know it.