The Global Oil Crisis And Its Demand

Since humans found that oil was better than coal for shifting vehicles

, people have fretted over oil wells running.

Instead of seeing the 1970s oil crisis end in a long-term shortage, we responded by developing more fuel-efficient cars and burning less oil for heating.

Experts say soaring demand from China and India is sure to send oil prices back above $100 a barrel. A supply disruption in the coming years, they say, could trigger panic, gasoline hoarding and perhaps lead to lines at the pumps akin to the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Global shortfalls of other fuels also could develop sooner than many people think, as a planet of nearly seven billion people and more than one billion gasoline-gulping vehicles strains the limits of combustible energy resources that are the underpinning of modern civilization.

While oil industry officials take strong issue with these dim views, critics charge that governments here and abroad have been less than candid about future oil supplies and the ramifications of failing to shift to alternative fuels.

The latest bout of worry over oil supplies was provoked by a series of events in the 2000s, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York, the Iraq War and an unfortunate incident in which Shell's chairman resigned after the firm overstated its oil reserves by 250 million barrels.

It all disturbed President George W Bush. And his fears over energy security brought him into alignment with Tony Blair, who was pressing to combat climate change. What's more it works for power stations, not for the sort of mobile pollution units known as cars for which oil is the preferred source of hydrocarbons.

But there's a downside to the sudden dip in concern over fossil fuel shortages. The worry over energy security was helping to drive development of renewables and nuclear. Now that has slipped, a flood of cheap gas on to the world market threatens to starve wind and solar. Then we have the rapid economic growth of the last 250 years based on the exploitation of numerous technological discoveries coupled with the fossil fuels that supplied the excess energy for the increasingly complex societies and interdependent societies that most of us live in today. Today anything less than steady economic growth creates political problems sometimes serious ones, for most peoples now look to their government to create the environment that will provide jobs and an adequate standard of living for all.

Oil comes from fragments of vegetable matter laid down amongst particles of rock. Even by 1980 we could only recover about 22% of the oil from a typical well. Technology has now driven that figure to 35%. Same oil wells, more oil.

The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones and when the Oil Age ends it may be because we've run out of space in the atmosphere to safely dump the emissions. If we ever take the threat of global warming seriously, that is.

by: Souvik D.

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