The oil question: nature and prognosis.

ABSTRACT

A review is given of the nature and origins of crude oil (petroleum) along with factors relating to its production and demand for it. The modern globalised world economy and its population has grown on the assumption of limitless supplies of cheap crude oil. Almost all agriculture now is completely dependent on available oil and natural gas to run machinery and to make chemical fertilizers. Our complacent regard for oil is however invalid and a gap between the relentlessly rising demand for oil and its supply is expected to appear at some time in the period 2010-2015. The global peak in oil production "peak oil" predicted by M. King Hubbert in 1956, will exacerbate the situation, and the world must seek to run and organise itself in an imminent reality where supplies of conventional crude oil are both limited and increasingly expensive. Providing the equivalent 0f 30 billion barrels of oil a year as is currently used across the globe, by unconventional kinds of oil, e.g. from oil shale and tar sands is" not realistic. Since most of the oil produced in the world is refined into liquid fuels to run transportation. human survival will depend on devising localised economies and communities that necessarily rely far less on personalised transport (cars).

Keywords: Oil, petroleum, crude oil, oil prices, oil refining, abiogenic theory, Hubbert peak, peak oil, Thomas Gold, conventional oil, unconventional oil, tar sands, oil sands, oil shale, heavy oil, API gravity, coal liquefaction, Fischer-Tropsch, oil reserves, methanol economy, global warming, climate change

1. Introduction

Since the mid-1950s, oil has become a major global source of energy. In addition to its importance in manufacturing fuels, petroleum is also a raw chemical feedstock for industry, providing a range of pharmaceutical compounds, organic solvents, plastics, fertilizers and pesticides. In material terms, quality of life has also advanced considerably and there are vastly more motorised vehicles, almost all of which are powered by fuels derived from crude oil. But oil is a finite resource, and the gap between rising demand and the quantity of oil that can be recovered, is both inevitable and imminent. This has profound implications for the survival of civilization and indeed of humanity itself.

The history and development of the oil industry and humankind's utter dependence upon petroleum is summarised in a recently published poem (1) with the satirical title "The Oil of Progress". Since the 1950s, crude oil has underpinned the growth in human population from around 2.5 billion to its present 6.7 billion, through modernised, mechanised agriculture and it might be said that we literally eat oil. Economic growth, mostly in the West and now in emerging nations such as China and India, has increased sizeably the number of cars owned privately, per capita across the world, increasing the demand on oil. Indeed, the number of cars held in the United States is greater than that of its population. Oil is recovered using the familiar "nodding donkey" pumpjack (Figure 1). In "The Oil of Progress" the conclusion is made that we will return to a way of life based around traditional agriculture and the heavy-horses, once there is insufficient oil to maintain our modern energy-rich lifestyle.

 
The Oil of Progress 
 
   Barreling-on, fomenting the black rivers 
   that metered-in an age of gold, 
   the planet spins against a thousand suns, 
   drawn upon a fragile canopy of time and space. 
 
   Horses chew-on calmly in the pasture, 
   made redundant generations back. 
   These unemployed, reluctantly drawn out 
   for a wedding or village affair on the green. 
 
   We struck it rich! Upwellings in unheralded Texan fields 
   murmured in a European war ... the first to come. 
   The new century rolled its eyes aloud 
   at Quantum Physics and tanks, 
   which generally broke down, 
   or sank in soiled mud around feet forever bound. 
 
   Depression came, blowing grains to swirl 
   dry and unsown in the dust bowls of wrath; 
   the razor-shards of oil plundered the land, 
   ploughing into the furrows of a second, greater war. 
 
   Reparations and expansion; populations grew. 
   Thirteen billion hands (working in pairs you understand) 
   of oil-fed fingers now abstract their attentions, 
   in blind faith, this cornucopia could never end, 
   each squeezing the Earth like a hollow stone. 
 
   Loosing the old ways and stuffy values ... 
   now oil-fed bombs fall on the swollen lands 
   of its source; doodling about the jigsaw-map 
   and shading-in the missing pieces, state by state; 
   tweaking the beard of an older faith. 
 
   Buckling-up the belt of quirky geology around the Earth, 
   to secure the ring of fire into more democratic hands; 
   lacing Nature's midriff tighter and tighter, 
   until the final phantom sputters 
   a farewell flame and is blown-out, 
   like the last smoking candle on a birthday cake. 
 
   Give them a lump of sugar from your hand, 
   and a hearty slap on the flank-entice them, with whispers. 
   Call the horses back again, sooner, not later. 
   The oil-party clock struck twelve, while our backs were turned.