It has been estimated that all the world's oil could be used up within 40 years if consumption continues at the present rate. What solutions can you suggest to address this problem? (describing the problem and suggesting solutions)."
reuse oil , recycle oil
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Answers
Anyone who suggests that all the oil will be used up in 40 years knows nothing about oil and gas exploration and production. It is true that if you take the current known producible reserves in the world and divide by the current consumption (about 100 million barrels per day and a barrel equals 42 US gallons) you will calculate that the current oil will last about 42 years. However, in 1974, when I started my university studies in Petroleum Engineering, we asked the same question of our professor. At that time the world was using about 65 million barrels per day. Dividing the known producible oil at that time by the current consumption rate yielded a life of 40 years. That was 44 years ago and we are now consuming 54% more than in 1974 and we still have over 40 years of production capability left. How is that possible? It is because in the intervening 44 years we have discovered more oil than we have used. Much more.
Note that the calculation is done with the ‘producible reserves’ or more precisely, the ‘technically recoverable reserves’. This is the term used for oil that we can produce at today’s technology and economics. As technology improves, and it always improves, the amount of oil that we can produce increases, even when we don’t find any new deposits. We have basically an unlimited supply of oil and natural gas to draw from. The only limiting factor is our technology. In 1974 the ultra deep ocean production came from water about 600 feet deep. It was considered impossible, by some folks, to drill in water any deeper than that. Today we are producing oil from water nearing 10,000 feet deep. That opens up lots of ocean area that can be explored that could not be before.
Another little known potential source of energy is methane hydrates. Methane hydrates are a physical and chemical combination of methane (natural gas) and water that is fairly stable and can be produced to provide energy. They exist in the Arctic and in the ocean boundaries around most of our continents. The United States Geological Service, USGS, has calculated that there is more energy in methane hydrates in the world than all the coal, oil and natural gas that we have ever discovered. We just need to develop the technology to produce it economically. There are several government and academic entities working on that problem, as we speak. Thus, when the oil is gone, and that won’t be for a long long time, we will be able to use methane hydrates to fuel the world for another thousand years, or so.
So, in summary, the short term solution to running out oil is to continue to drill for it and continue to develop the technology to produce what we know is there. A long term solution is to develop methane hydrates, which can then be converted to oil for producing virtually all the products we now get from crude oil.
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