So while the United States is the biggest culprit with respect to consumption, the fact of the matter is, of the top 20 gas consuming countries in the world, only the U. Because the United States has the highest emissions standards in the world and produces the best emissions and fuel efficiency technology in the world, the amount of fuel the U.
For the last decade, Russia and Saudi Arabia have remained number one and two with respect to oil production. However, according to Fortune. The increase in U. According to the IBTimes. The United Arab Emirates has In comparison, the North Sea has around 4. New discoveries are being made, however, and Brazil recently discovered a new field with an estimated five to eight billion barrels.
Such finds are rare. In reality, Venezuela and Canada have two of the largest reserves left on earth. However, the oil is found in oil sands which makes them difficult to extract. Still, taking oil sand reserves into account, Venezuela has the largest proven reserve in the world with over , millions of barrels of oil, Saudi Arabia is second with , millions of barrels, and Canada is third with , million.
For a variety of reasons, oil production is already a more strenuous process than in the past and this is having global effects. For several years now, scientists have noticed the consequences. According to a IBTimes. The fuel used to harvest the food has doubled over the last 12 months. In , a major corporation published findings with evidence that the world only has 50 years of oil left , 53 at the time.
But even though there is still oil in reserve, that does not mean that getting to that oil is as straightforward as it once was. Not only is the design of extraction more complex, the execution is as well. Extracting oil is more difficult than ever.
And a more complex extraction process comes at a price. What we must do to extend the life of our oil reserves until we discover or develop a source of energy that can replace oil is no secret. Since the 60s and 70s the message has been the same: save fuel.
That means doing one of two things or both. We must either drive less or produce — and use — technologies that allow us to get the most out of the fossil fuels we have left. Technologies like the Rentar Fuel Catalyst are critical for two reasons. First, the Rentar Fuel Catalyst reduces emissions dramatically. For basic emissions like carbon dioxide, the Rentar reduces emissions by For less common but equally harmful emissions — like ammonia and particulate matter — the Rentar reduces emissions by between 30 and 59 percent.
But just as important as reducing emissions is reducing fuel consumption by increasing fuel efficiency. The Rentar Fuel Catalyst reduces fuel between 3 and 30 percent, depending on the type of engine, boiler, or furnace to which it is applied. While it is easy to assume that the consequences of emitting greenhouse gases are the biggest non-war related threat mankind faces, if we are not prepared for a world where fossil fuels are no longer available, the consequences will be extraordinarily dire.
We must save as much oil as possible until the day comes when our world is no longer almost completely dependent upon it. Your email address will not be published. From , global production increased 1. Commercial since the s, CO2-enhanced oil recovery offers a gigantic global prize of trillion barrels and a safe way to sequester CO2 underground for 1, years.
In short, the assertion that oil and gas are not compatible with our goal to implement a more sustainable energy system is becoming increasingly false. For example, the U. The reality is that ALL energy systems are evolving, so ALL technologies must be allowed to compete in our goal to: 1 grow our economy, 2 increase our energy security, and 3 reduce GHG emissions.
If not, we greatly increase the risk of not deploying the most economical and cleanest sources of energy. Demonstrated by the shale revolution, it's the emerging North American unconventional resource base that has the greatest potential. And with advancing technologies and higher prices, even more will become available: the "unconventional" evolving into the "conventional.
The exact opposite turned true. And as for the assertion that oil reserves and resources will somehow become "stranded assets" because of anti-carbon laws, nothing will be further from the truth.
This insidious effort to scare off investors simply will not prevail. Developing petroleum assets will be critical to meeting rising energy demand around the world, especially since oil is the world's most important fuel, the indispensable basis of globalization, and without significant substitute.
In fact, the real "stranded assets" we must concern ourselves with are the growing 6 billion human beings that live in undeveloped nations TODAY, lacking oil and other modern forms of energy. It is precisely these improvements in exploration and extraction that make it hard to pin down exactly how much crude oil is left in the world. In , for example, the U.
Geological Survey estimated there were up to 20 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable crude oil in the Wolfcamp Basin. Part of the Permian shale play. Two years later, the USGS revised this estimate to In just two years, the extraction methods used in the U. Yet, prices can also discourage technical improvements in oil exploration and extraction. They can deter exploration growth in general, which is another thing that happens when the industry cycle reaches a low point, and we witnessed it relatively recently during the crisis.
Every oil company keeps an eye on its reserve replacement ratio. That is the ratio between new oil the company discovers through exploration and the oil it produces. As a result, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie in warned the world might face an oil shortage of as much as 4. To date, reserve replacement is at a year low, according to Rystad Energy data ; oil companies are replacing just one in six existing barrels with new discoveries. There is also another metric related to the reserve replacement ratio that has a bearing on estimates of global oil reserves.
This is reserve life: the period that an oil company can continue producing a stable amount of oil from its existing reserves. That was up from 1. In , the world had 1. So, as demand has continued to grow consistently over the last 20 years, so has production and, counterintuitively, so have global oil reserves. Yet in that same statistical review, BP said these higher reserves would last us for just another 50 years: another metric oil companies use to measure their business sustainability.
Called reserves-to-production ratio, this simply means the oil reserves of a company—or a planet—at the end of any given year, divided by the production of oil during that year. In other words, the world would have enough oil for another 50 years if production remains at million BPD , which it averaged in This is unlikely to happen.
Energy demand has been growing as consistently as oil production. While at the moment, demand is lagging behind supply, most forecasters expect this to change as the global population grows fast, and this leads to an equally rapid rise in demand for energy. While a lot of the additional generation capacity will come from renewables, oil will continue to feature heavily in the global energy mix, which makes it safe to assume production will continue growing for some time.
As this happens, the work of oil companies will become more challenging because recoverability of oil reserves will worsen. This is yet another facet of oil exploration and production that has a bearing on the answer to that fascinating question: how much oil do we have left?
As these sweet spots get exhausted over time, producers need to tap harder to access reserves, which cost more to develop. Again, the story of U. Thirty or forty years ago few companies, if any, paid any attention to shale because there was enough conventional oil. Deepwater exploration is another case in point.
Offshore production has historically moved from shallow waters to ever-deeper deposits as natural depletion takes its toll. Onshore production has moved from conventional deposits to shale and oil sands, and from easy-to-access oil to more challenging fields.
So, as the difficulty level in oil extraction increases, so do costs. When these rise to a point when a company cannot extract the oil at a profit, the deposit becomes economically unrecoverable. Even if it remains technically recoverable, this is one more reason to take any global oil reserve estimate with a pinch of salt. Whatever technically recoverable oil the world has — is not all economically recoverable. The amount of technically recoverable oil will probably continue to rise from year to year.
Oilfield service companies continuously work to make exploration and extraction more reliable and more efficient. As for economic recoverability, this is a whole other matter. It depends on oil demand, and many believe oil demand is getting threatened by renewables—a threat that will only grow. We may well have enough oil to last us another 50 years.
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