The oil in question in the 1850s was not today’s black gold but the sperm whale’s, which had fuelled the world for more than a century. At a time when whale oil was running threateningly low due to over hunting and with coal becoming increasingly expensive, people were in search of a substitute to supply the energy that sustained their societies.
The case today may be similar. Are we running out of oil or running into oil:
As the petroleum geologist Peter R Odell put it, “if anything, the world is running into oil”. Just look at last week’s discovery of oil in Dubai. Estimating that only 1.5 per cent of the Earth’s total physical resource base has been used since 1860, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared that since fossil fuels are in abundance, they would not impose limits on carbon emissions during the 21st century.
Personally, I think the oil situation is not a matter of running out of oil. I think it is about return on capital. The cost to obtain new sources of oil are rising, because many new sources are hard to reach. The means the ROI on new finds shrinks…and so do the economic gains derived from oil.
Source: The National
