So, by my calculation the world uses 30 billion barrels of oil each year.

[phantom power]

That means, the oil industry has to make 60 discoveries like this each year, every year, to continue breaking even.

Wonder how that's going.

[palm_to_forehead]

1. Have you seen the price of oil, it's going pretty damn well for them.

..

[phantom power]

2. Yes, well we all love to hate on the oil companies. And with good reason. Then again...

I wonder if I could discover 30 billion barrels of oil each year, and get it out of the ground onto the market, for less money.

:shrug:

[palm_to_forehead]

6. I don't hate on oil companies for price increases

so much as I hate on OPEC. The oil companies actually have very little power over the price of oil.

They are benefiting from the control that the OPEC cartel wields.

[dkf]

3. For now. But what happens when they deplete their wells?

There's only so much you know.

[FBaggins]

4. Not exactly

60 discoveries "like that" and/or improve the fraction they can get out of exiting discoveries.

[phantom power]

5. Also true. But I think we're sucking on the straw pretty hard these days.

[FBaggins]

7. And it isn't the cleanest straw. Is it?

But very little of the oil from "fracking" counts as new discoveries.

I think we run out of the desire to burnt he stuff and live with the consequences before we run out of what we can get to.

At least... I hope we do.

[louis-t]

8. I'm not sure of your math.

Say, 6 billion times FIVE would equal 30 billion. Am I missing something?

[NickB79]

9. The US alone uses 6-7 billion barrels per year. nt

Globally, we use 85+ million barrels per day, ie 30+ billion barrels per year.

[Terry in Austin]

10. The math is about right, though mbpd is more customary

About 85 million barrels per day is the current consumption rate -- 31 billion barrels per year.

Either way, that's where the crucial concern is -- the sheer, immense volume necessary to replace what we're losing. Most people really don't have a grasp of what a "billion" is.

Some observers have proposed a larger unit that would make such quantities more meaningful: the cubic mile of oil (CMO). One CMO equals 26.22 billion barrels of oil, so we're using somewhat over 1 CMO per year. Note that there was only about 75 CMO in the planet to begin with, and we've burned through roughly 30.

The few that are left come up a lot more slowly -- more slowly than we've come to depend on.

End of the day, anyone griping about price and greedy corporate behavior may be speaking the truth, but it's just totally missing the point.

[PamW]

11. How about looking at the history....

That means, the oil industry has to make 60 discoveries like this each year, every year, to continue breaking even.

Wonder how that's going.
---------------------------------------------

You can answer your own question by looking at history.

When was the last year that the oil companies didn't find the necessary quota of
oil and we all had to stop driving our cars because there wasn't any gasoline to
run them?

PamW

[Terry in Austin]

12. And the history is how we get projections

We look at the demand rate, the discovery rate, world oil reserves and the depletion rate, and get a pretty good idea of when petroleum-based business as usual becomes extremely unlikely.

Oil production stopped increasing in 2005. It's plateaued right now, and will soon be in decline -- five years is a generous estimate. Meanwhile, demand keeps growing.

Recent history shows that we use about four barrels of oil for every new barrel discovered. No one is able to identify where the new reserves are that could get us back to break-even.

We would have to discover the equivalent of one new Saudi Arabia every five years. Clearly, that's not happening.

If you become dissatisfied with the belief that we can maintain our present oil consumption levels indefinitely, it's easy enough to get the facts of the matter. Unpleasant, yes, but also honest.

[pscot]

13. Arithmetic is a bitch

Well done.