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BP's Latest Estimate Says World's Oil Will Last 53.3 Years
Submitted by Andy Tully via OilPrice.com,
According to BP, drivers whose vehicles rely on burning oil have a little more than a half-century to find alternate sources of energy. Or walk.
BP’s annual report on proved global oil reserves says that as of the end of 2013, Earth has nearly 1.688 trillion barrels of crude, which will last 53.3 years at current rates of extraction. This figure is 1.1 percent higher than that of the previous year. In fact, during the past 10 years proven reserves have risen by 27 percent, or more than 350 billion barrels.
The increased amount of oil in the report include 900 million barrels detected in Russia and 800 million barrels in Venezuela. OPEC nations continue to lead the world by having a large majority of the planet’s reserves, or 71.9 percent.
As for the United States, which lately has been ramping up oil extraction through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, BP says its proven oil reserves are 44.2 billion barrels, 26 percent higher than in BP’s previous report. This is more than reported most recently by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which had raised its own estimate by 15 percent to 33.4 billion barrels.
That means shale-oil extraction enterprises in the United States have more to offer than many first believed. The sources include the Bakken formation spanning Canadian and U.S. territory in the West, the Eagle Ford formation in East Texas and the super-rich Permian Basin in West Texas, which alon holds 75 billion barrels of recoverable fossil fuels.
And though Eagle Ford and Bakken seem to hold far less oil, EOG Resources, which has been working Eagle Ford, has increased its estimates of the site’s reserves. The Motley Fool reports that its latest estimate of recoverable fuel is 3.2 billion barrels, more than the nearly 1 billion barrels expected in 2010.
Nevertheless, BP is cautious in defining oil reserves. At the top of an introductory web page on the subject, the company states baldly: “Nobody knows or can know how much oil exists under the earth's surface or how much it will be possible to produce in the future.”
And while the amount of proven oil reserves, and their extraction, are rising each year, so is concern about how their recovery. Not only do new extraction methods use huge amounts of energy to get even more energy, particularly from shale, they also use chemicals and metals that many fear poison nearby soil and groundwater, and generate huge amounts of toxic wastewater.
Such methods are helping the United States, for example, to achieve energy independence. But that won’t apply to China, a huge customer for fossil fuels. BP says Asia-Pacific oil reserves will last only 14 years at current rates. That means China will have to keep importing oil, putting further strain on global reserves.
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BP is big enough to have several working around the clock.
a.k.a. "marketing".
And environmental concerns in this industry should not be taken lightly with players like BP who have demonstrated their arrogant recklessness and negligence with the Deepwater Horizon disaster and tellingly are pioneers in the decidedly under exposed geo-engineering schemes currently unfolding around us and above us...
http://chemtrailsnorthnz.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/the-link-between-bp-ch...
http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_commen...
[snip - emphasis mine]
Synthetic organisms
Just over a month ago, Venter announced the ‘birth’ of Synthia, the first artificial self-reproducing organism, thereby stimulating further investment in the controversial field and attracting many calls for more regulation and oversight of these new technologies. If we have learnt one thing out of the BP-Halliburton-Transocean disaster it is this: do not trust those who are profiting from the use of a technology with its safety.
And then there is geo-engineering –the biggest technological gamble of all --which Koonin and BP see as a viable backup plan. Geoengineering refers to seemingly outlandish large-scale schemes to re-engineer atmospheric and ocean systems in order to counteract global warming. Like the massive, improbable-sounding concrete caps, nuclear options and ‘top kill’ plans now being played out on the deepwater horizon well head, such schemes have a boyish sci-fi feel to them – dumping iron in the ocean to prompt plankton blooms that would gobble up C02 or whitening clouds to reflect sunlight back to space.
A Plan B for the world
In 2008 David Eyton, BP VP for science and technology announced that a new area of investigation for BP was indeed geo-engineering. ‘We cannot ignore the scale of the challenge,’ he wrote ,‘and we all need to have a plan B if the world is unable to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations and the worst of climate change predictions are realized.’
BP’s preferred option is a proposal to shoot sulphur particles into the upper atmosphere to mimic the effect of a volcanic plume. In the case of a large volcanic eruption (such as Pinatubo in 1991) such particles reflect sunlight back to space and significantly reduce the Earth’s temperature.
Steve Koonin convened a fraternity of a dozen scientists for a week last year in order to look in detail at the technical research agenda of short-wave climate engineering, through the use of stratospheric aerosols. The study was the first to be sponsored by NOVIM, an outfit that claims to ‘provide clear scientific options to the most urgent problems… without advocacy or agenda’.
The report outlines a decade-long research programme that begins with computers in the lab, and then moves to field experiments to ‘monitored deployment’. The specific goal of the report is to devise a research agenda that will ‘diminish risk and uncertainty’.
Of course, what constitutes an acceptable risk when referring to the Earth’s complex, fragile and already out-of-whack climatic systems should be a political, not a mere technical, question. Oil executives and fishermen are unlikely to respond in the same way. Governments and peoples from the Northern and Southern hemispheres are also likely to disagree. Women and men have also been shown to differ on attitudes to risk.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/chemtrails-a-planetary-catastrophe-created-...
Re: do not trust those who are profiting from the use of a technology with its safety.
The invisible hand of the market always results in a righteous outcome. You must trust the righteousness of the market to decide what is just.
Only when the markets are not manipulated.
Maybe you have honest price discovery on your planet.
no reason to NOT give amnesty to millions more foreigners, right?
Just another article by one of those eco-hippies who hates everything Merica stands for, and the troops.
Buy BP assets through Exxon (they will buy the wreckage of the BP collapse)
Pumping shitloads of poisoned water in rock formations is NOT something to do when there's enough oil. EROI is going down hard; that's why CB's are going full retard imho.
Didn't we play this same game back in the 1970s?
We did. We just substituted our own Domestic Peak Oil event with cheap Arab oil.
http://www.genscape.com/sites/default/files/images/US-Crude-Oil-Producti...
BUt when you look at this chart....just realize that we STILL haven't gotten back to the historical Domestic Production rates of 1970. And the way we are getting close is through shale oil.....which is inferior to Light Sweet Crude. So it's more expensive to get out of the ground and more expensive to massage back to something useful for derivatives. NOt to mention a HUGH energy waste and water waster to get out of the ground.
Also just keep these images in mind. This is what it used to be.
http://www.inmagtexas.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/120-620x330.jpg
Now we get most of our imported oil from Canada in the form of this....
http://theenergycollective.com/sites/theenergycollective.com/files/image...
http://assets.vancitybuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/canada-tar-sand...
http://www.cooldavis.org/wp-content/uploads/%23U00acGarth_Lenz-7142.jpg
That's what I call "winning"
This report includes wringing out those super absorbant seaguls that they used to clean the gulf. They're committed to the gulf you know.
BP will buy their oil from Exxon, who in turn will buy their oil from BP.
It's just like high-finances. Only more toxic.
Damn....rehypothecating oil.
I do like your mind.
The Chinese have shown us the way!
ROTFLMAO !!! Thanks...I needed that !
I do not believe this.
You belief has nothing to do with it. I would like to believe the moon is made of cheese. I like cheese. But physics tells me otherwise.
Maybe the sustained price at the pump....even after we have just been named the largest oil producer in the world can convince you.
Then again.....maybe not.
Jumbo,
I have always said that: "People's Lack of Imagination" will be their undoing.
What I mean is all those people who say to you;
"I just can't Imagine them not having a solution"
"I just Can't Imagine it ever being THAT bad"
"I just Can't Imagine......(fill in the blank)"
Know what I mean?
<sigh> Every day.
No, You are right. This is the ROSY Sunglasses view of it.
Only 50 years till i can realease my carlosfandango supermagnetic spinergy core drive without getting whacked
50 years...
If this estimate is anything like the way they estimate leaks, they are orders of magnitude off.
My guess is BP is putting this out because theyintend to spill more oil.
Great news! Takes care of the Global Warming problem that is supposed to happen in 100 years! Woohoo! Out pal 'Al' Gore seen dancing in the street!
this is the kind of bullshit you read when oil prices are going down and BP's profits are suffering.
BUY OIL!!!!!!
BUY ISIS!!!!1
Peak Oil ! bitchez.
And CHECK MATE to "Ruling the world" Elite.
Can't Print it,
Can't Steal it,
Can't Buy it,
Mother Nature bats last.
I've been noticing -- but only very recently -- the stupid fucks seem to have just realized how that works.
I guess we get to see now what their Plan B was. But I'll bet you something -- they don't have one.
I think they never had a Plan B Cougar. Would love to have you as a neighbor.
1-2 years we will be as ready as we can be.
All those people with electronic/paper assets, RICH !!!!
THey will be a sight to see.
(Always love your posts as you know.)
Ditto for me. I'm in the same mood you were a few weeks ago Cougar. Total disgust with this world. Rare for me, typically an optomist but today. Despair.
Unfortunately, it's not the intelligent that run the world, it's the greedy.
Not that I think any group has the right to run the world. Just trying to make a point.
WAR
Nope. Time to buy interests in coal and timber.
How was that stuff going to be shipped?
K-Mart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL4lSavSepc
And Amazon drones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98BIu9dpwHU
Yeah, they've been saying it's very scarce and ready to run out for EVER.
Unhook oil from the petrodollar and let's find out what the shit is actually worth.
If real reserves were known, and from that the runway we have could be calculated, and then the cost of economic losses afterwards (amortized over a generation because you got no time now fuckers) could be calculated, and the cost of retooling everything to run on electrcity as well, and then the cost of ramping up sustainable energy production on a global scale worked in -- by God I bet the actual cost per barrel in the ground right now must be near $100,000 per.
If as much cash was thrown at solar as has been thrown at the coal/oil business I think your numbers would change.
Something that scares the controllers is distributed energy production. They can't control the flow if everyone can produce what they need.
That's why solar has gone nowhere, IMHO.
cougar_w
So the price of oil is being manipulated downward to the order of $100 or so, when it should be at $100,000?
Load up on massage oil!
That's long enough for me.
I'll take oil for $1000, and the answer to the question is Obamas fault! there i said it.
Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? Watch it. Now, my straw reaches acroooooooss the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I... drink... your... milkshake!
A bravura performance by Daniel Day-Lewis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_hFTR6qyEo
Plan A: Solar energy.
Plan C: Mass genocide.
Plan B: Some solar energy and selective genocide.
Plan Z : Genocide under the Sun.
Do you think Nero wasn't so crazy as he watched Rome burn. It wasn't like it was a sneak attack, The empire was probably in crisis for years. In that moment he picked up his violin? and played maybe somthing beautiful in those last moments.
These smart guys with all the answers. sarc/
abiotic oil- big oil wins. peak oil- big oil wins. left/right false dichotomy much?
300% increase in price ($38 to $109) from '04 til '13 produced a 5% increase in global production and a 9% increase in demand (consumption). And available net exports are falling...this game is up. No cheap energy, no "trend" growth, no way to service debt. Amazing <sarc> there is no discussion of ANE's on which the price of all oil is established...like everything, oil is priced on the margin and in this case based on what can be exported after exporters have their fill...importers are paying a kings ransom and will continue to pay more and more because there isn't enuf ANE.
53 yrs...what a joke. When the last 10yrs show that the price of something triples but net supply barely changes while total demand continues rising faster than supply...ummm, that may indicate there is a problem.
Stop.
It's not just that. Look at the price of EVERYTHING that needs cheap fossil fuel to make.
Like ....FOOD ! Like 100-300 % increase in 10 years for many items.
M. King Hubbert was a brilliant geologist that gave us Hubberts peak. It's a simple bell curve that states ounce production of a given well begins to fall, you can safely assume you've extracted about half of the potential crude in that particular well. Applied to world totals you get Hubberts peak. But calculating world reserves is dubious simply because they are often over stated because, well, it's money in the bank. That said, Hubberts peak is absolute reality. Just a matter of when it will be obvious to everyone.
But I really doubt this arbitrary figure of 53 years. I suspect the real time line will be a bit longer. Granted we will not extract the last drop. Diminishing returns will just shut the rigs down one by one. And of course there are multiple outliers like intense wars to control the last drop, economic depression etc..
The USGS said 10 or 15 years ago that we had 200 years left. I don't know.
I think we could switch over to coal, nat gas and renewable in 53 years. That would be wise.
Forget your cars folks, the real issue when it comes to petroleum is fertilizer and pesticides all made from petroleum. And no, we can't "compost" to feed the world.
Switch over to coal and live like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4DtOhe2LfQ
LOL. If in India and China----long cow dung futures. Hoprefully, this will give ALGORE an aneurysm. So much for the middle class in the developing world.
For the preppers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ag6LoqcVsM
Whew....I know it works....just hate to be in a wreck and have that pressure cooker punctured.
I am continually amazed at the ignorant Doomsday predictions.
If supply lowers, then the price will go up.
If the price goes up, people will be able to afford less oil.
It also means that other energy sources become that much cheaper by way of comparison.
There are innumerable ways to run a car. There are innumerable ways to produce heat. There are innumerable ways to generate electricity.
The Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) is a choice, not a mandate. And it was arguably not the best choice at the time, nor today. It remained and remains because the drawbacks of its design were ECONOMIC - i.e. were not expensive ones.
.And while ICE's are becoming less economic, to address the transition costs is more an issue of bureaucratic rigor mortis, and failure of imagination than it is an issue of engineering. Shortly ICEs have vested interests with power in government, that are not dismissed by degrading economics.
So, shortly, oil will never run out because you will abandon it long before you get to the last drop.
The transition will involve some temporary drops in standard of living. It will involve economic dislocations as money moves from doing things the old way to a new way.
But it need not be the end of the world... if the vested interests don't make it the end of the world.
Here is ONE example:
http://www.cyclonepower.com/
"Burns anything that burns"
Oil is getting low because we have developed too much of a unipolar energy market. There are lots of things that burn at acceptable energy densities.
I agree. Lots of really cool alternatives and everyone aware of whats going on and the means to move towards alternatives is likely doing the best they can. However, there is a lot of to overcome to get from hear to there and likely a lot of dead people in between.
bull fucking shit
there's over 200 years of known reserves in the mid-east alone
we are carbon based life forms - the day we run out of oil is the day we are no longer carbon based lifeforms
Reserves are NOT the same as economically feasible recoverable reserves.
The House of Saud is already and has been for some time, water cutting a LOT of their fields. When you start seeing Saudi Arabia doing this......
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cUMBYsn7j90/T7DRDi226hI/AAAAAAAAbiE/H-LkZg8Sv...
http://i2.wp.com/cleantechnica.com/files/2012/10/20121019-200954.jpg
http://www.greenprophet.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/desert_solar.jpg
You know something is up. Like......the future.
however since oil is abiotic, economically feasible recoverable reserve (like in middle east, very shallow) are unlimited (you may reach the bottom, but then you just wait 2 to 5 years, and tada, full again.
but shhh, if people were to know oil price would go down & what would go down instatantly then ? CPI ! which would destroy debt economy
100% bs, oil is abiotic & unlimited
(the russian know this & look for & find oil on the basis of the abiotic theory)
The abiotic oil theory is worth considering.
http://viewzone.com/abioticoilx.html
this rating thing is really bad, these guys voting down should be allowed to do so after proposing something;
there are tons of literature on the subject, so to those plainly rejecting the abiotic theory that makes so much more sense than the fossil one please bring forward a coherent argument (that does not originate from BP or other central banker owned oil company or your belief system)
Hmmm. Let's see, 53.3 years eh? Well that will make me just over 125 years old when we run out. I'd better start filling old milk bottles with gas and stashing them in the basement. Don't want to be ill prepared.
So we have 53.3 years to perfect the perpetual motion machine. I don't see that as a problem.
I wont need oil when i am 97. But the sooner we run out the sooner we can kill all the crazy muslims and be done with their shit, so i say go buy a suv.
Luckily, I've been focusing on my walking the past few years, slowly building up my endurance for longer walks. Now it's to the point I'm doing all my local errands by walking (or biking) to the point my car mostly just sits in the garage these days. Averaging 4+ miles per day, and I know I can do 10+ now before really tiring out.
God / Nature gave you those legs for a reason. Good on ya' mate !
genetically engineered microbes
Gene Specific Virus
Genetically engineered microbes that produce oil from waste material.
Only 53 years? Shit - even if we had peaked that means half is left... so lots left -- I would have thought longer...
ONE PROBLEM - what is left is TOO EXPENSIVE:
THE PERFECT STORM (see p. 59 onwards)
The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.pdf
HIGH PRICED OIL DESTROYS GROWTH- According to the OECD Economics Department and the International Monetary Fund Research Department, a sustained $10 per barrel increase in oil prices from $25 to $35 would result in the OECD as a whole losing 0.4% of GDP in the first and second years of higher prices. http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/high_oil04sum.pdf
Read up on the "off site" energy input for CAFOs sometime.
For the US, 150 a barrel means No More Meat. Beef, Pig, and Chickens.
Get to know your Farmer. Buy Local, Join a CSA.
(Find one near you. http://www.localharvest.org )
Britain to fund South African carbon trading experiment
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN0FJ1F120140714
(Reuters) - Britain will expand funding for a programme to help coal-rich South Africa develop a carbon trading market in an attempt to rein in its rising greenhouse gas emissions.
The British High Commission in Pretoria last week said it will fund a pilot emissions trading programme from next year to help companies prepare for a 120-rand-per-tonne ($11.21) carbon tax that is expected to come into force in 2016.
The value of the grant was not disclosed.
The launch of South African's carbon tax, which would apply to major emitters including steel giant ArcelorMittal, utility Eskom [ESCJ.UL] and petrochemical group Sasol, was delayed by one year to allow more time for planning and consultation with stakeholders.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/07/australia-already-has-a-kind-of-emissio...
The RET, Renewable Energy Target, aims to reduce emissions by mandatory use of 20% renewable energy by 2020. For all kinds of reasons we are overachieving, and headed for 27% renewables mix (along with shocking electricity bills, see here too).*
“Official estimates suggest that the RET will generate a transfer of $20bn from householders and industrial users by 2020.”
So in this artificial government-mandated market, which sector is fast to get involved? Finance.
Good. Only 53.4 years until our Congress does something.
BP.... BP ..... ok now tell us how a blow out preventer works..... and how to negotiate a spill settlement that does not include escorts and other fraudulent claims.... thanks. some say oil is produced in endless quantities in a natural process inside the earth... global warming... peak oil....planet x.... sky is falling... fear-pimps... Give me solutions NOT PROBLEMS...
In 50 more years liberal historians will be praising Obama as the President who saved all the oil in Canada and the Arctic and the continental US off-shore by shutting all this down during his four terms - just so the remnants of the US could still have some of that oil in 2064 under President Chelsea Clinton.
As far back as I can remember we have always had about 50 more years of oil. Each time the estimate was new and improved. Maby in 50 more years it will still be 50 more years of energy.
any mathematicians here? A quick google shows a barrel of oil on average equals some 430-ish kg CO2. Article's 1.688 trillion barrels gives how many gigatons of CO2 please? (edit:EPA says 5.80 mmbtu/barrel × 20.31 kg C/mmbtu × 44 kg CO2/12 kg C × 1 metric ton/1,000 kg = 0.43 metric tons CO2/barrel ) so 1.688trillion BBL = ?GT CO2?
Since the industrial revolution we've dumped some 550GT CO2, and are pumping out about 50GT/yr these years, so we will reach 1000GT CO2(e) about 2020. At that point we are told that we'll be headed for +2C temp rise and hover in the 450 ppm CO2 range
Business -as-usual makes it pretty clear we're going to overshoot 1000GT and 450ppm...
(we're just musicians... TIA!)
(does BP ever discuss stranded assets in public? lol)
Edit: 1.688 X .43 = 0.72584 so 725 GT? sounds right, 72.5 seems too low, 7250 too high??? So if 725 is right, that's about what brought us from pre-industrial ppm of 280 to today's 400ppm, so potentially it , by itself, would take us to 520ppm CO2 by 2060-ish...