this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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There are 1.65 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves in the world as of 2016.

The world has proven reserves equivalent to 46.6 times its annual consumption levels. This means it has about 47 years of oil left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves).

This means that the oil is going to run out in our lifetime

Source/more reading: https://www.worldometers.info/oil/

Update: It is infact not true (or just partially true), because it only considers already known oil reserves that can be pumped out with current technology.

There is more oil that can potentially be used as technology and infrastructure advances, so the estimate of 50 years is wrong.

For the correction thanks to Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win (their original comment)

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[–] Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win 90 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I wish this was true so that there would be a hard limit to within this century, on how much ff related damage we will do.

Unfortunately, they are still finding more, particularly in the north. How much yet-to-be-proven oil still out there is what really should be considered along with technology improvements that increase how much oil can be effectively recovered.

proved reserves only represent the oil that a given region can theoretically extract based on the infrastructure it has planned or in place. This is only “the tip of the iceberg,” says Steven Grape, who works with proven oil reserves for the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

[–] IndiBrony@lemmy.world 34 points 1 month ago

Not to mention the vast reserves known to be in Antarctica.

That treaty is only going to last so long before people start getting desperate and start fighting over it.

[–] ultrahamster64@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Oooh I didn't think about that... I'll update the post

[–] lemming@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 month ago

The reason for the 50 years of oil, as I heard it explained, is that this is how far ahead the oil companies plan. They look for enough oil to cover the timeframe they plan for. When they have that covered, they don't look, until they need more. When they need more, they go and find it.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 46 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I remember when they said there were 30 years left in the '90s.

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 13 points 1 month ago

Yeah, not trying to poke holes, but I was hearing "less than 50 years left" when I was in school in the 2000s. I do remember seeing a post here and there about new oil reservoirs being discovered but never any follow up. So I suppose that could be stretching things out. But oil use certainly hasn't decreased in the last 25 years.

[–] Artyom@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago

By 2050, there might even be 70 years of oil left!

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 45 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"Peak Oil" they used to call it. Lots written about to collapse of everything after Peak Oil. Been predicted since at least 1970's.

Now we need to run out for our own good.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Peak oil was about conventional oil. Had we not discovered other sources and methods for extraction then we likely would have run out. And running out isn't accurate, it's just that oil becomes harder to extract and thus too expensive for regular uses.

There are many things that were predicted as a collapse factor that we then innovated solutions to break past those barriers. We're too smart for our own good, because each time we find new ways to keep going we make things worse and get ourselves even more into a dead end. When we do "run out" of oil of any type, which will happen at the growing rate we use it up, will we be smart again and find replacements for all the things petroleum is used for (not just fuel)? One important one being fertilizer to make food grow in our otherwise barren soils. Fun fact: people need to eat to live. Most people in the world, especially the western world, exists and survive because of food thanks to oil.

Lastly, we would have done so much better post-collapse if things had happened naturally with a smaller population and less damage to the environment. The higher you fall, the more it will hurt, and we're damn high now compared to the mid/late 20th century.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Peak oil was about conventional oil. Had we not discovered other sources and methods for extraction then we likely would have run out. And running out isn’t accurate, it’s just that oil becomes harder to extract and thus too expensive for regular uses.

In other words, we did hit Peak Oil and that's what caused the development of things like fracking, oil sands, and deep ocean drilling.

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[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 31 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The way things are going we're all going to be dead before it gets to that point

[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

Probably because of all the dipshits in this thread specifically, acting like we don't need to stop extracting and using oil.

[–] Noodle07@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

And it could be caused by nuclear fallout before climate change gets critical

[–] atempuser23@lemmy.world 30 points 1 month ago

At the current rate of oil consumption there are only 15 years left in the world. So it’s fine.

[–] tobogganablaze@lemmus.org 25 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I heard the same thing 30 years ago.

There are still unproven reserves waiting to be discovered.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 9 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Under the Arctic. Underneath the seabeds in the deep oceans. Probably other places that are hard to get to right now.

The question that really needs to be asked is not can we find more oil, we absolutely can and will seek it out. We should ask, can the environment that we live in support more burning of even more oil? We all know that answer, that's why we're cutting our emissions down rapidly. /s

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[–] collapse_already@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

The amount discovered in each of the last three years has been less than a year's worth of consumption. The global consumption rate is still rising. At some point we will necessarily run out. The lack of readily available reserves has already lead to "innovations" like fracking, oil sands, and deep sea extraction. Those techniques weren't profitable when production is easy, but they have delayed the inevitable.

I fully expect to see solar powered wells extracting oil that otherwise has a negative EROI in my lifetime.

[–] CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 25 points 1 month ago (5 children)

This thread is filled with people who don't grasp what a finite resource is. Saying "I remember hearing that x years ago". Sure there's probably more it there somewhere, but we don't need to have to the finish on this. There are are kids who are going to grow up, people who aren't born yet. Hell, at current rates, we might fuck up things with climate change. Which, even more reason to use less.

Call me selfish, but I want my nieces and nephews, to be able to grow up into a prosperous world and not some weird dystopian hellscape.

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[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I believe prices will increase dramatically long before we actually run out. Any non-critical usage of plastics and petroleum products will be phased out for economic forces if nothing else.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The trick is figuring out how to make that happen. Today.

You could easily argue that practically non-existent passenger trains and slow adoption of EVs in the US is primarily caused by cheap gasoline. Maybe if we fixed prices to be higher, we’d be able to make the progress we need

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 3 points 1 month ago

I believe gasoline is indeed heavily subsidized. I always thought that was a strange choice.

I was in Norway a few days ago and I was impressed how pretty much all the vehicles I saw were EVs and that the bus system appeared to be relatively efficient.

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah don't bother thinking about the future. The market will sort it out. Just go buy some shit.

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[–] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 16 points 1 month ago

There was 50 years worth of oil left 20 years ago too

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago

Honestly we've known peak oil would occur in our lives for several decades. Not that you could tell by any project to prepare for such an event.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 13 points 1 month ago

"The report says we can release 565 more gigatons of co2 without the effects being calamitous." "It says we can only release 565 gigabytes." "So what if we only release 564?" "Well, then we would have a reasonable shot at some form of dystopian post-apocalyptic life, but the carbon dioxide in the oil that we've already leased is 2795 gigatons so..."

The Newsroom climate change scene

Point being, we already have oil we haven't burned yet that will shoot us far past any limits we've pretended we'll adhere to, and yet we're still looking for more oil to dig up. How can this end well?

[–] johsny@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

This means that the oil is going to run out in our lifetime.

Well, not in mine. So good luck with that!

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

The disconnect between the general public and the realities of the petroleum industry may be the largest gap in existence. Pretty much any article you read gets 99% of the info hilariously wrong as the journalist has no idea wtf they're talking about.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'll be 91. I'm sure I'll have bigger problems by that point.

......such as having been dead for the past 49 years!

[–] ultrahamster64@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago

Shiiit, 1985 to 2075? That's a long life

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[–] Hikermick@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I've heard this for my whole life. Oil runs out in X years, until they develop affordable ways to dig deeper and get at more

[–] invertedspear@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

Cheapest oil runs out in x years. Mid cost in y years. Expensive in z years. Then we get into “manufactured” oils.

Oil isn’t going to run out, it’s just going to get more expensive.

[–] helloworld55@lemm.ee 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I was curious how best to cut down on our usage, if we'd be aggressive, how long we could make our oil last.

From the EPA, seems the like roughly 40% of an oil barrel ends up being used to create gasoline source. The transportation sector accounts to 2/3 of our total oil consumption. In the transportation sector, roughly 54% of energy is used just for passenger cars. source

If everyone in the world stopped driving gasoline cars and switched to a 100% renewable option, we would only cut our oil production by about 36%. That changes the timeline from 50 years to 78 years.

Pretty saddening to think about. Hopefully some technology improvements for oil recycling come around quickly

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It's ok, there isn't 50 years of world left.

[–] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)
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[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Of human-habitable world, you mean.

Imagine if the dinosaurs had newspapers back then: "THE WORLD IS ENDING!!" And mammals be like "lol"

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[–] rusticus@lemm.ee 8 points 1 month ago

I wish it would run out much sooner. Burning fossil fuels is responsible for 20% of all deaths in the world.

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I remember going to a presentation in Boulder Colorado in 2005 or somewhere near there about how the world will run out of oil in 10-15 years, they had tons of data they had collected with a bunch of researches and everything.

We just keep discovering more and more oil, and get better at extracting it.

[–] SlothMama@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I mean, yes, but there is a finite amount, we just don't have the ability to accurately gauge how finite. We also created new techniques for extraction and technology changed to enable those new techniques.

The information was good at the time, but it won't get better at the same rate, we're closer to the truth now than we were before because of advancement.

Anyway, my point is the new estimate is much closer to true than the one your comparing it to.

[–] joostjakob@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Glad you already learned this is probably nonsense. The wrong reasoning is very similar to much thought about overpopulation. The amount of people that makes for a place to be overpopulated is a function of how societies work and the technologies they have at hand. One extra issue there is that improvements in technology usually lead to population growth, so much progress gets cancelled out.

[–] YeetPics@mander.xyz 5 points 1 month ago

They've been saying this for 50 years at least.

[–] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 2 points 1 month ago

Part of me wishes that the oil would run out sooner to give governments more urgency to actually do something about our fossil fuel dependency, cause apparently the increasingly apparent effects of climate change just aren't enough motivation.

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