Good news for all those who have nightmares about the prospect of peak oil: scientists have discovered an oil field which has a gargantuan 155 quintillion barrels of oil, or about 200 times more hydrocrabons than there is water on earth. There is however, a catch: the field is located some 1,300 light years away. From Rigzone. [6]
The scientists work at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and using the 30m-telescope of the Institute for Radio Astronomy they discovered a vast cloud of hydrocarbons within the Horse Head Nebula galaxy in the Orion constellation.
Upon discovery of the cloud IRAM astronomer Viviana Guzman declared that, "the nebula contains 200 times more hydrocarbons than the total amount of water on Earth!"
Just for those of you curious as to exactly how many barrels of oil that roughly equates to, here you go: one hundred and fifty-five quintillion, two hundred and thirty-eight quadrillion, ninety-five trillion, two hundred and thirty-eight billion, ninety-five million, two hundred and fifty thousand, or 155,238,095,238,095,250,000 barrels.
Alas, this means that even if a ship left today to reclaim any of this massive stash which at last check has not been claimed by any terrestrial E&P corporation, it would come back some time in the year 4612. So while oil on earth may well end, hopes of the fracking renaissance notwithstanding, then solar and geothermal better last well into the 47th century, at which point all the crude the world may need will be made available.
Does this also mean a return of the old abiogenic hypothesis?
Now like me you might be wondering how oil, which is supposedly produced from organic matter buried millions of years ago, could possibly exist in space. Well it turns out that these hydrocarbons were likely created by the fragmentation of giant carbonaceous molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are produced during the death of a star.
There is even a theory that molecules such as these could have served as the first organic compounds for creating life.
Either way, don't expect the market to start discounting this rather dramatic increase in discovered oil just yet, and definitely don't expect gas at the pump to move even remotely lower on this news.
The good news, for all the Keynesians out there, is that the idea to build the Death Star, as proposed first on Zero Hedge [7], may finally get some life, especially if the Death Star is provided with some exploration and production capacity. And what self-respecting Keynesian wouldn't salivate at the prospect of injecting $852 quadrillion of debt growth into the economy at this time?
h/t @GreekFire23