Earth Is An Oil-Producing Machine — We're Not Running Out (Page 3): Critical thinking has become a lost art :sm13: .

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

fourlocks wrote:

Thank you for adding a little logic to the "continuously being replenished" statement. It took millions of year's worth of organic matter being subjected to tremendous underground pressures for millions of years to turn vegetation into oil. We've used up a considerable volume of that oil in only a 150 years or so and it's not like our compost piles are going to turn into oil any time soon.

Critical thinking has become a lost art

.

tomad Loc: North Carolina

clint f. wrote:

You’d intentionally lie for money?

Should that surprise you. Nearly every company in the world does that.

Walkabout08

I’m pretty pessimistic that the world will ever heed the advice having been given for the last 50 years and stop burning fossil fuels. Irrecoverable loss of plants, insects and animal species is well documented and underway at an historic rate. So go ahead, burn on! Make a wasteland of the planet. The tipping point of no return will soon be reached. Homo Sapiens one day will be extinct and new species will evolve. Hopefully ones that are wiser than us.

John N Loc: HP14 3QF Stokenchurch, UK

Linda From Maine wrote:

Note the OP's source document was written in 2015. Curious why he'd post old "news."

Since our addiction to oil use is closely related to climate change, "never running out" is going to be the least of our worries in another decade.

There'll be plenty of oil left when we leave the Planet. And i don't mean leave as in a Space Trip, more like when the Dinosaurs left the Earth.

OneShot1 Loc: Wichita, KS, USA

I'll believe in global warming when celebrities start selling their ocean-front properties (Hi Obama in Martha's Vineyard and coastal Hawaii!) (Hi John Kerry flying your Gulfstream to Davos.) (Hi Al Gore whose mansion could heat 100 homeless.) It's a TOTAL FARCE! Biggest hoax on humankind ever. If you look at oil, there is no way there could ever have been enough biomass (dinosaurs) to produce it. It's NOT fossil fuel. Great post!

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

I believe it is a bit of a misconception to think of crude oil as a source of energy. It is more important to think of it as the source of over 6,000 products we all rely on. The shingles on your roof, the asphalt on the highways, lubricants and solvents, plastics, even aspirin, ammonia, and fertilizers to grow the quantity of food needed to feed the masses, and the list goes on and on.

One could say that EVs will help save the environment, however, if there are no paved roads (even making concrete takes massive amounts of heat energy), I doubt the expensive electric vehicles will be a pleasure to drive on dirt roads.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

sourdough58 wrote:

Earth Is An Oil-Producing Machine — We're Not Running Out

KERRY JACKSON
05:39 PM ET 11/04/2015
Ever since M. King Hubbert in the 1950s convinced a lot of people with his "peak oil" theory that production would collapse and we'd eventually exhaust our crude supplies, the clock has been running. And running. And it will continue to run for some time, as technology and new discoveries show that there's still an ocean of oil under our feet.

Engineering and Technology Magazine reported this week that BP — the company that once wanted to be known as "Beyond Petroleum" rather than "British Petroleum" — is saying "the world is no longer at risk of running out of resources."

"Thanks to investment into supercomputers, robotics and the use of chemicals to extract the maximum from available reservoirs, the accessible oil and gas reserves will almost double by 2050," Engineering and Technology said.

A BP official told the magazine that "energy resources are plentiful. Concerns over running out of oil and gas have disappeared."

Things are so good, in fact, that Engineering and Technology says "with the use of the innovative technologies, available fossil fuel resources could increase from the current 2.9 trillion barrels of oil equivalent to 4.8 trillion by 2050, which is almost twice as much as the projected global demand." That number could even reach 7.5 trillion barrels if technology and exploration techniques advance even faster.

This information backs up the idea that Earth is actually an oil-producing machine. We call energy sources such as crude oil and natural gas fossil fuels based on the assumption that they are the products of decaying organisms, maybe even dinosaurs themselves. But the label is a misnomer. Research from the last decade found that hydrocarbons are synthesized abiotically.

In other words, as Science magazine has reported, the "data imply that hydrocarbons are produced chemically" from carbon found in Earth's mantle. Nature magazine calls the product of this process an "unexpected bounty " of "natural gas and the building blocks of oil products."

So don't feel guilty about exploiting this "bounty." There seems to be plenty to go around — and there will probably still be a lot left when technology, not hurried by government mandates and subsidies but guided by market forces, produces practical and affordable renewable energy.

But for now, enjoy our cheap, abundant and efficient "fossil" fuels.

Earth Is An Oil-Producing Machine — We're Not Runn... (show quote)

And there is more natural gas than oil. If we began taping into those reserves and using liquified natural gas to a greater extent, it would lengthen the amount of time oil reserves would be available.

clickety

Linda From Maine wrote:

I've become rather fatalistic in believing that human nature will continue to be about greed and shortsightedness until things get really, really bad in the richest, most developed nations (such as major coastal cities flooding badly).

Fear not “Oh ye of little faith”.

petrochemist Loc: UK

TriX wrote:

So is the argument that the supply is continuously being replenished and will never run out, or that newer exploration/drilling methods will stretch the available but limited supply longer than was previously thought? If the former, references/links please. If the latter, that’s what I’d say also if I were an oil producer wanting to keep my stock price high in the face of alternative energy technologies and the push toward alternate fuel sources for vehicles.

The proof is certainly only for your second scenario, I assume the boss of BP means 'not in my lifetime' when he say's 'never'.
Most if not all the states in the developed world individually use more oil in a year than nature creates. Millions of years of nature laying down oil, means the reserves are likely to be good for a hundred years, but I doubt they'd last a thousand at the current usage even with the improved extraction we've seen since peak oil was first coined.

Although I work in the oil industry I feel we should be taking all practical steps to reduce our use of oil for fuel. There are many other uses of petroleum needed for today's world, such as plastics, solvents, lubricants and even covid vaccines (we've had to dramatically boost our production of heptane for the vaccine). Vegetable oils are quite different in composition & will need very intensive processing to match the capabilities current products manage. Today's usage is clearly not sustainable long term, and the sooner we make changes the less drastic the changes need to be.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

sourdough58 wrote:

I would suggest it is only "old news" for those that saw it when it first came out. As for your comments on climate change, If not for climate change the North American continent would still be covered in a huge glacier 1 mile deep that as it melted and moved along slowly formed our mountains and lakes. all without the help of hair spray and gas powered cars and trucks.

Wow, you really are a piece of work.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

Linda From Maine wrote:

It's a mystery to me how some will reference changes that took millions of years to occur but who ignore the impact of the current 8 billion+ human inhabitants who strain all the resources and give nothing back to Mother Earth.

That was then, this is now.

There’s no use arguing with someone that touts climate change as a good thing.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Linda From Maine wrote:

It's a mystery to me how some will reference changes that took millions of years to occur but who ignore the impact of the current 8 billion+ human inhabitants who strain all the resources and give nothing back to Mother Earth.

That was then, this is now.

Nothing matters to those who will protect the sources of their fortunes at any price. They know their time here is limited, and choose to live it up to the max. They have no sense of morals or ethics, or any consideration for those who will inherit the mess.

"You're on your own, kids!" is a phrase I heard one slovenly rich guy in a classic, pink '59 Caddy convertible yell at a crowd of young climate protesters. His license plate read, "59GASHOG".

My high school chemistry and physics teacher laid out the math of global warming pretty well, back in 1973. It has turned out to be fairly accurate.

Fears of running out of oil are unfounded, to be sure. But that isn't why many of us try to reduce our reliance on it.

Barre Loc: Fairfax Co, VA

Linda From Maine wrote:

It's a mystery to me how some will reference changes that took millions of years to occur but who ignore the impact of the current 8 billion+ human inhabitants who strain all the resources and give nothing back to Mother Earth.

That was then, this is now.

Many thumbs up, Linda

avflinsch Loc: Hamilton, New Jersey

TriX wrote:

So is the argument that the supply is continuously being replenished and will never run out, or that newer exploration/drilling methods will stretch the available but limited supply longer than was previously thought? If the former, references/links please. If the latter, that’s what I’d say also if I were an oil producer wanting to keep my stock price high in the face of alternative energy technologies and the push toward alternate fuel sources for vehicles.

The modern abiogenic petroleum origin proposed by Nikolai Alexandrovitch Kudryavtsev is mostly unproven. Even it is proven, the risk is that our consumption is much greater than the production.

John H. Loc: Central Washington State

TriX the Cat ; "So is the argument that the supply is continuously being replenished ..."

There is much oil and many uses for it – one list has 6,000 products. There will be a long long tail as it is used.
There are reports of "abiotic oil" – ignore that myth, although there is a bit. Synthetic oil is a different issue and is now produced with more to follow.