At current and projected rates of consumption, how long will known and
projected petroleum reserves last?

Hello.

This is one of those questions for which there is no simple answer. 
Among analysts who believe that the world will run out of oil,
estimates vary from, say, 30 years from now to 100 years from now.


From the web site: Petrostrategies.org:

"Forecasters predict that oil consumption will increase 1% annually
and gas consumption 3% annually. With this forecast we would run out
of oil by 2034 and gas by 2035.  Before we panic and wonder how fast
scientists can develop other energy sources, we need to consider
another part of the equation.
Reserves end-of-year = Reserves beginning-of-year - Production +
Additions
This equation says that the reserves at the end of the year are equal
to the reserves at the beginning of the year less production plus
additions. What are these additions? Scientists aren't sitting idly by
and waiting for the reserves to run out. As we have learned in earlier
sections, they are looking for oil and gas all around the world and
using sophisticated technology to find more oil and gas. Let's suppose
that these scientists can replace 75% of the production each year.
(This may seem like a pretty high number but companies that average
this kind of performance would soon be out of business.) On this
basis, we would run out of oil in 2096 and gas in 2071."
http://www.petrostrategies.org/Learning%20Center/LearningRunningOut.html

"How long will the Oil last?" (web site owner predicts "we'll run out
of oil in 2031")
http://www.fredx.org/oil.html

From the American Petroleum Institute
"Q: How much oil is there? Are we running out?
While the world holds a finite supply of oil, we're not in danger of
running out any time soon. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that
the Earth could hold as much as 2.1 trillion barrels of crude oil --
enough to supply the world with oil for the next 63 to 95 years! In
fact, though we're using more oil, we're also finding more. New
technology makes that possible."
http://api-ec.api.org/about/index.cfm?objectid=E6E2029C-8140-11D5-BC6B00B0D0E15BFC&method=display_body&er=1&bitmask=001002000000000000

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On the other hand, there's a school of thought that rejects the idea
that the world will ever run out of oil.  The basic argument here is
that if oil ever got so scarce that it was getting close to running
out, it would also be so expensive that people could no longer afford
to use it and would have to switch to substitutes.



'A popular 1972 book entitled The Energy Crisis projected 30 years of
gas reserves and 20 years of oil reserves. It was not out of line with
prior "official" estimates: In 1939 the Department of the Interior
projected that the United States would run out of oil in 1952. In 1947
the State Department pronounced that no more oil would be dis- covered
on U.S. territory. -In 1951 the State Department declared that global
petroleum supplies would be exhausted by 1964. In 1979 the
International Energy Agency predicted that global petroleum reserves
of 645 billion barrels would be exhausted by 1985. The fact is, proven
oil and gas reserves have risen over 700~o since 1950. In 1990, we had
1 trillion barrels of global reserve. . . Natural resources are today
half as expensive relative to wages as they were in 1980; three times
less expensive today than they were 50 years ago; eight times less
costly than they were in 1900. · Jane Shaw of the Political Economy
Research Center claims that there "has never been a nonrenewable
resource that has actually disappeared, because in a market system
people start looking for substitutes when prices rise."'
source:
David Garman
Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals 
(1996)
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309055784/html/423.html

"We Will Never Run Out of Oil"
http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/run_out_of_oil.htm

WHY WE'LL NEVER RUN OUT OF OIL.
Discover 
Author/s: Curtis Rist
June, 1999
Complete text at findarticles.com
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1511/6_20/55926786/p1/article.jhtml


------------

Some analysts say that the really important question is not when we
will "run out" of oil, but when we will reach a point where demand
substantially exceeds supply and we start having significant
shortages.  This is what one analyst calls the "Big Rollover."
 
"Are we running out of oil?"
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/magoon/

More information:
://www.google.com/search?q=%22Big+rollover%22+oil&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=0&sa=N

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search strategy:
"out of oil in"
"out of oil by"

I hope this helps.

In a sense, nothing will ever be completely expended.   This is also
true as a practical reality because as something becomes more scarces,
its use is discouraged.  There are mountains of shale that can be used
to make oil, cat crackers, polymerization, and many other ways of
making oil that are currently not worthwhile.  Many oil wells have
been permanently capped because it would be to expensive to extract it
at anywhere near the current price.  It is a basic law of supply
question.  The amount of oil is almost exclusively dependent on price.
 But of course, if all of the fossil fuels are burned, C02 levels
would rise.  Then, water that doesn't "fizz" would become a valuable
resource......

Right now we have energy consumption increasing at a more or less
constant rate of around 7% per year. At this rate consumption will
double in about 10 years. In each doubling period the total consumed
will be equal to the entire prior consumption.

That means that the consumption in the 90’s was roughly equal to the
complete consumption of oil in the entire history of the world prior
to Dec. 1989.

If this continues in the decade 2000 to 2010, consumption will again
equal the total up to Dec 1999 or TWICE the consumption in the history
of the world up to 1989. (This has nothing to do with oil per say but
is a mathematical result of a geometric series.)

At this rate of increase, if the entire world was a ball of oil
floating in space then we would run out is some 300 years.  However in
290 years we would still have the same amount of oil as had been
consumed in the entire history of the world to that point.

The real trick in projecting oil consumption is to project the rate of
increase. As is stated above once production becomes more expensive
and oil scarcer, the cost will increase and the demand drop off.

In looking at anyone’s projections look for the assumed rate of
increase. Often the oil companies will say that we have many hundreds
of years but the catch is at current rates of consumption, the
opposite will be said as well. We only have 30 or 50 years or proven
reserves at present rates of growth.

Both approaches are mathematically correct and neither really tells us
anything.

The fact remains that we have a finite quantity of oil (we really do
not know how much oil we have) and a geometric rate of increase in the
consumption of that oil.

See also Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis at
http://www.npg.org/specialreports/bartlett_index.htm