The Future of Fossil Fuel

Originally published in the Britannica Book of the Year. Presented as archival

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During the first half of 2008, prices of Fossil fuels—petroleum (oil), natural gas,
and coal—rose steeply. Crude-oil prices, for example, set record highs on a regular
basis and soared for a short time to more than double the average price of crude
oil in 2007. Because fossil fuels were crucial sources of energy worldwide, the rapid
rise in prices spurred debate about the accessibility of global fossil-fuel supplies, the
extent to which producers would be able to meet demand in decades to come, and
the potential for alternative sources of energy to mitigate concerns about energy
supply. The debate focused in particular on petroleum, globally the most
important fossil fuel and the primary source of fuel for transportation.
How much oil does the Earth have? The short answer to this question is, “Nobody
knows.” In its 2000 assessment of total world oil supplies, the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS) estimated that about 3 trillion bbl of recoverable oil originally existed
on Earth and that about 710 billion bbl of that amount had been consumed by 1995.
The survey acknowledged, however, that the total recoverable amount of oil could
be higher or lower—3 trillion bbl was not a guess but an average of estimates based
on different probabilities. This caveat notwithstanding, the USGS estimate was hotly
disputed. Some experts said that technological improvements would create a
situation in which much more oil would be ultimately recoverable, whereas others
said that much less oil would be recoverable and that more than one-half of the
world’s original oil supply had already been consumed.
There was ambiguity in all these predictions. When industry experts spoke of total
“global oil reserves,” they referred specifically to the amount of oil that was thought
to be recoverable, not the total amount remaining on Earth. What was counted as
“recoverable,” however, varied from estimate to estimate. Analysts made distinctions
between “proven reserves”—those that could be demonstrated as recoverable with
reasonable certainty, given existing economic and technological conditions—and
reserves that might be recoverable but were more speculative. The Oil & Gas
Journal estimated in late 2007 that the world’s proven reserves amounted to roughly
1.3 trillion bbl. To put this number in context, the world’s population consumed about
30 billion bbl of oil in 2007. At this rate of consumption, disregarding any new
reserves that might be found, the world’s proven reserves would be depleted in about
43 years.
The world’s oil is not distributed evenly by region. The overwhelming majority of
proven oil reserves are located in the Middle East. As of 2007 the Middle East region
(including Iran but not North Africa) laid claim to about 56% of the world’s total proven
reserves—that is, more than the rest of the world combined. Following the Middle
East were Canada and the United States, Latin America, Africa, and the region
occupied by the former Soviet Union. Each of these regions contained less than 15%
of the world’s proven reserves.
The amount of oil a given region produces is not always proportionate to the size of
its proven reserves. As of 2007 the Middle East contained most of the world’s proven
reserves but accounted for only about 30% of global oil production (though this was
still more than any other region). The United States, by contrast, laid claim to only
about 1.5% of the world’s proven reserves but produced about 10% of the world’s
oil.
Crude oil is a mixture of hydrocarbons (compounds composed of hydrogen and
carbon) with small amounts of other chemical elements, and it exists in a liquid
state both when underground and at the Earth’s surface. Crude oil accounts for most
global oil reserves. Global oil-supply figures typically also include liquid
hydrocarbons from other sources, such as (1) condensates and natural gas liquids,
which exist underground as gases but naturally condense into liquids as they are
brought to the surface, (2) tar sands, which contain a highly viscous form of oil that
is expensive to extract, and (3) oil shale, a type of sedimentary rock that can be used
to produce an oil substitute called kerogen. Other factors that can enter into global
oil-supply figures include refinery gain (volume expansion through the refining
process) and supplies of oil substitutes, which can satisfy oil demand. In 2008 about
15% of the global oil supply was made up of liquid hydrocarbons other than crude
oil. The percentage was increasing, and some analysts expected that 50% of oil-
production growth between 2008 and 2020 would come from alternative forms of oil
and from oil substitutes.
The rise in oil prices in early 2008 sparked discussion over whether the world was
beginning to run out of oil. It was clear that the Earth had a finite amount of oil and
that global demand was expected to increase. In 2007 the National Petroleum
Council, an advisory committee to the U.S. secretary of energy, projected that
demand for oil would rise from 86 million bbl to as much as 138 million bbl per day
in 2030. Yet experts remained divided on whether the world would be able to supply
so much oil. Some argued that the world had reached “peak oil”—its peak rate of oil
production. The controversial theory behind this argument drew on studies that
showed how production from individual oil fields and from oil-producing regions
tended to increase to a point in time and then decrease thereafter. (Oil production in
the continental United States increased steadily through the early and mid-20th
century until it peaked in 1970; by 2008 it had declined by almost 50%.) Peak-oil
theory suggested that once global peak oil had been reached, the rate of oil
production in the world would progressively decline, with severe economic
consequences to oil-importing countries.
A more widely accepted view was that, through the early 21st century at least,
production capacity would not be limited by the amount of oil in the ground but could
be limited by other factors, such as geopolitics or economics. One concern was that
growing dominance by nationalized oil companies, as opposed to independent oil
firms, could lead to a situation in which countries with access to oil reserves would
limit production for political or economic gain. A separate concern was that
nonconventional sources of oil—such as tar-sand reserves, oil-shale deposits, or
reserves that are found under very deep water—would be significantly more
expensive to produce than conventional crude oil unless new technologies were
developed that reduced production costs.