Running out of oil - will it ever happen?

TangoWhiskey

TangoWhiskey

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Two things here... we keep hearing warnings that we'll run out of oil in xx years. Here's an interesting counterpoint to that argument, which maintains that we'll never run out of oil:

http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/run_out_of_oil.htm

Thoughts?

In any case, oil will eventually get rare/expensive enough that it won't be used as liberally as it is now. As I watched the jets departing DFW today, I had to wonder what viable 'alternative fuel' technologies are being developed for jet aircraft. Are new engines under development that could use hydrogen or other fuels? Will existing jets be able to be retrofitted, or are we talking about wholesale fleet replacement?

Fuel costs will continue to be a big factor for airlines, likely more than 9/11 was.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Thoughts?
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Yeah, that guy should be allowed to graduate from college before being a columnist. Or perhaps he did already, as that piece seems to be a little out of date:

With gasoline less than $2.00 a gallon in most areas of the United States...
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Regardless of his "new math" obfuscation, "running out of oil" and "running out of sustainable production except for limited niche or military purposes" are basically the same thing :rolleyes: There will always be a few drops rolling around at the top of the crust, undiscovered, even as the Sun goes supernova and we are all gone on our fusion-powered ships for Earth v. 2.0
 
Literally, no, we won't run out of oil. But the real world effects will be the same.

As he points out, the market will outprice those at the bottom and work its way up. More and more people will be unable to afford it. The problem is, as we've seen in recent years, that the price is steadily rising. If there is not a viable alternative in place before the market demands such a high cost, then we are essentially screwed.

Current alternatives focus on ethanol and biodiesel. There is an article on AOPA about biodiesel in jets, and we may see a larger push towards more diesel engines in both automobiles and aircraft. I see ethanol falling by the wayside except maybe as an additive to extend gasoline supplies. I do believe that solar power will come back into play as soon as DARPA succeeds in the realm of high efficiency solar cells, which they are actively working on for the armed forces.
 
wbarnhill said:
Literally, no, we won't run out of oil. But the real world effects will be the same.
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The issue with petroleum production is more widespread than just "oil", too. As a mechanical society, we're dependant on lubricants, grease, and all of the other derivatives that come from oil (cosmetics, plastics, etc.).

Solar, wind, ethanol, bio-diesel, hydrogen and other alternative fuels are good options, but don't address all of the areas that 'running out of oil' will impact.
 
smigaldi said:
Spin zone fodder
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"The Spin Zone" is the forum for discussions that touch on non-aviation related topics of a potentially highly charged nature. Non-aviation related topics on Politics and Religion are automatically "Spin Zone" topics, and other non-aviation related topics may be moved here from Hangar Talk at the discretion of the Pilots of America Staff. The Rules of Conduct apply in full to this forum as they do to all other aspects of Pilots of America. This forum is provided to allow users to "opt out" of non-aviation topics of a charged, sensitive or otherwise potentially volitile nature. To Opt Out of the Spin Zone (or any other forum), go to the User CP, select Options, and the Opt Out controls are all the way down.
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If it gets highly charged, we'll move it.

I read the article. It amounts to, "Oil will just get too scarce and too expensive to use." Hardly a controversial or groundbreaking idea. In fact, it hardly justifies press...
 
TangoWhiskey said:
The issue with petroleum production is more widespread than just "oil", too. As a mechanical society, we're dependant on lubricants, grease, and all of the other derivatives that come from oil (cosmetics, plastics, etc.).

Solar, wind, ethanol, bio-diesel, hydrogen and other alternative fuels are good options, but don't address all of the areas that 'running out of oil' will impact.
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Quite true. How much do synthetics break into those areas? Could we live in a world without natural oil?
 
There are other sources of oil than crude petroleum, as well. Vegetables and animals both produce oils and fats that could potentially be converted to lubricants for mechanical applications.

Crude oil's just been the most abundant source in the past, so we've not invested into researching the alternatives as much as we could have.
 
Greebo said:
Crude oil's just been the most abundant source in the past, so we've not invested into researching the alternatives as much as we could have.
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Considering the national security issues associated with crude oil it seems to me that we should have been doing more than just have a strategic reserve. The government could use national security as the reason to invest into alternative fuels and energy sources.
 
Greebo said:
If it gets highly charged, we'll move it.

I read the article. It amounts to, "Oil will just get too scarce and too expensive to use." Hardly a controversial or groundbreaking idea. In fact, it hardly justifies press...
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Spin zone? Wow, I had no idea oil was such a touchy subject. ?!?

(I take that back... everytime I pay to fill up my tank these days, it touches me quite personally!)
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Spin zone? Wow, I had no idea oil was such a touchy subject. ?!?

(I take that back... everytime I pay to fill up my tank these days, it touches me quite personally!)
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That's cause you're putting the nozzle in the wrong place, dude...
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Spin zone? Wow, I had no idea oil was such a touchy subject. ?!?
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The desription of Spin Zone is
Non-aviation related topics on Politics and Religion are automatically "Spin Zone" topics
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hence why I though that this may end up there as discussing oil availability and depletion will run into energy policy and politics. Spin Zone is not all vile and venom. Sometimes there are some great threads on there. Many times just silly ones, and often enough ones that are somewhere in the middle.
 
Greebo said:
There are other sources of oil than crude petroleum, as well. Vegetables and animals both produce oils and fats that could potentially be converted to lubricants for mechanical applications.
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And teenagers. Don't forget teenagers.
 
smigaldi said:
The desription of Spin Zone is hence why I though that this may end up there as discussing oil availability and depletion will run into energy policy and politics. Spin Zone is not all vile and venom. Sometimes there are some great threads on there. Many times just silly ones, and often enough ones that are somewhere in the middle.
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Got it... what actually spurred this whole thought for me was the jets departing DFW... what happens if/when we run out of oil?

Yeah, spinZone here never seems to get quite as 'dangerous' as even the normal forums on the... oh, never mind, I can't say that, I think.
 
The oil "crisis" of the 1970's involved a 5% drop in oil availability for 1 year. It caused prices to spike and widespred economic hardship.

Sooner or later the availability of oil will diminish. That cannot be argued. It may happen soon, it may have even happened already. If we all get lucky it could not happen for many years, but the recent unprecedented rise in the price of oil makes me suspect sooner rather than later.

I don't like to think about what an annual 5% drop in oil supply would look like in this country. Its scary. I suspect that natural gas supplies will diminish as well, since it mostly comes from oil wells. There goes all our gas and electricity.

The problem is that all the things we would like to use to replace oil (hybrid cars, solar cells, etc...) all take oil to produce. Once its availability becomes limiting, those things become very expensive indeed.

What really scares the bejesus out of me is that most of the grains grown here are from special varieties that respond well to fertilizer, the basis of the so-called "green revolution". Breaking the bond in a dinitrogen atom can only be done by two organisms, bacteria and people, and the latter do it using oil. I think you see where I'm going with this.

That no one else in this country is worried about this amazes me.
 
steingar said:
That no one else in this country is worried about this amazes me.
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You mean no one else other than who? You? I'm sure lots of people are worried about it.

I do agree with what you're saying... and I think oil supply limitations (given our civilization's huge dependency on it, well beyond "gasoline") will have a larger impact on our lives than "global warming".

We may well become an agricultural civilization again. Tony's probably doing the right thing flying gliders! :yes:
 
I don't worry about things which I can't control. Even if I completely stopped using all dino oil products, which is not possible at this time, my stoppage would have ZERO net impact on overall consumption.
So, I'll just go on my merry way :D
 
kevin47881 said:
I don't worry about things which I can't control. Even if I completely stopped using all dino oil products, which is not possible at this time, my stoppage would have ZERO net impact on overall consumption.
So, I'll just go on my merry way :D
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Aren't you somewhat involved in part of the problem? :)
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Got it... what actually spurred this whole thought for me was the jets departing DFW... what happens if/when we run out of oil?
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Which is why I advocate finding alternative energy solutions NOW, instead of later, so we can use the large supply of oil which is still left to us for applications that don't easily lend themselves to anything other than petroleum, such as plastics (though plastics are with a doubt overproduced and over utilized) and, possibly, jet engines.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
You mean no one else other than who? You? I'm sure lots of people are worried about it.

I do agree with what you're saying... and I think oil supply limitations (given our civilization's huge dependency on it, well beyond "gasoline") will have a larger impact on our lives than "global warming".

We may well become an agricultural civilization again. Tony's probably doing the right thing flying gliders! :yes:
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yep i just need to move to a hill and get set up for bungee launching. then ill just need to invite about 20 of my best friends over to give me a pull in order to fly.
 
My 2 bits-

Chemical & Engineering news reported a couple of years back the we are finding fewer reserves than we are using- we are over the "hump" and petroleum is getting scarce.

The USA is the Saudi Arabia of coal- the USAF is testing a jet engine fuel from coal. Coal can go a long way towards replacing many hydrocarbons.

Plants can make up for some of the complex chemicals for plastics. I suspect the crops we are using now to create ethanol or biodiesel will be supplanted by plants more suited for oil, be genetically engineered for oil content, or we will use algae (40-60% fats). This brings up another issue- saponification of the fats to make biodiesel creates glycerin as a by-product. Glycerin is used as a moisturizer in cosmetics & creams, and can be nitrated to make nitroglycerin (a component of dynamite). We won't need all the glycerin we'll make...
 
Mostly wishful thinking. Coal hasn't got anywhere near the punch of oil, and jets burn thousands of gallons an hour. There are lots of diferent kinds of coal, and many of those are really, really harsh on the environment. The Nazis tried making coal into oil during WWII and gave up, it didn't work. Sure you can make lots of chemicals out of plants, but I'm willing to bet we'll be too busy making food out of plants.

I actually do quite a bit to conserve oil myself, flying is really my only luxury, and even then I use a relatively slow vehicle with a low fuel burn. With avgas climbing the way it is I barely keep current.

I just saw a story on CNN that the economy was going to be the big election issue. I guess what surprizes me is that given the magnitude of the looming catastrophe, you would think that everyone would be as concerned as I, and alternative power generation would be the issue. I fear we'll just keep on doing what we're doing until there isn't enough oil to do that anymore, and then we won't do anything, since we won't have the resources to outfit ourselves with alternative energy technology.
 
steingar said:
Mostly wishful thinking. Coal hasn't got anywhere near the punch of oil, and jets burn thousands of gallons an hour. There are lots of diferent kinds of coal, and many of those are really, really harsh on the environment. The Nazis tried making coal into oil during WWII and gave up, it didn't work. Sure you can make lots of chemicals out of plants, but I'm willing to bet we'll be too busy making food out of plants.
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Actually coal oil and oil shale do work pretty darn well. 40% of all the oil coming out of Germany during WWII was coal oil. It ran Hitler's war machine, so claiming it didn't work is a pretty lame statement.

The problem with coal oil and oil shale is the cost to create the resulting fuel and the environmental issues. It could be a useful stop gap for the price increase, but we need to focus on other technologies as well.
 
Last time I checked, Germany lost that particular war. Moreover, I have been told that the German advance during the battle of the bulge stalled because of a lack of gasoline. It doesn't sound to me like the program worked all that well.

To compound things, I strongly suspect that WWII era Germany only used a fraction of the energy we do now. We only used a fraction of the energy we do now, so it seems reasonable. Sure, we'll find stuff to burn, but at higher prices with lower punch. At that point all the hybrid cars and solar power cells and whatever else will likely be too expensive to produce. I guess that's why I'm worried.
 
I posted the following in another thread in the zone of spin, but I think it bears repeating here, especially because I'm sick of the spin that's put on this particular issue and we all need to be able to discuss it without said spin to get something accomplished.

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Y'know, I'll take the opportunity of one of my rare forays into the Spin Zone to ask this question:

Let's assume there is global warming. What is the harm in doing things to reduce it? Let's see... We come up with alternative fuels and other, cleaner means of energy... Mmm, that's terrible.

So what's wrong with just assuming that global warming DOES exist and doing things that will make our air cleaner REGARDLESS of whether it helps slow down the maybe-global warming?

Ken Ibold said:
I think it's high time we put more effort into alternative fuels and conservation rather than trying to find ways to add bells and whistles to Hummers and finding ways for cars to shave 0.3 seconds off the time it takes to get to the next stoplight. I am simply skeptical of the notion that climate change is due in any significant part to human activity.

The danger lies in creating public policy based on inconclusive science when that flawed policy leads to huge extra costs the citizens are required to bear by governmental decree, rather than choose to bear by market forces.
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I think you see what I'm saying though. IF global warming was absolutely 100% proven, we'd do a bunch of things that would be a darn good idea to do anyway.

So why don't we do those things?

Frankly, I don't think we should "create public policy based on inconclusive science." I think we should create said public policy because there are MANY reasons besides just global warming to do so.

I do not believe that we should wait for "market forces" to take care of this, though. Market forces will keep gas and oil as cheap as possible until we're damn near out of it, when it'll suddenly become an emergency to come up with ways to use alternative energy sources and completely replace our energy infrastructure in a very short period of time. We need to start on this earlier rather than later so that the ultimate goal of reducing our dependence on oil can be arrived at gradually to minimize the otherwise-dire social and economic impacts.
 
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