Oil Reserves - The Myth of An Endless Stream of Oil and Natural Gas Unraveled - A Short Documentary

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• published: 25 May 2014
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Oil Reserves - The Myth of An Endless Stream of Oil and Natural Gas Unraveled - A Short Documentary This is the Earth as it looked 90 million years ago. Geologists call this period the late Platatius. It was a time of extreme global warming when dinosaurs still ruled the planet. They went about their lives, securing their place at the top of the food chain, oblivious to the changes taking place around them. The continents were drifting apart, opening huge rifts in the Earth's crust. They flooded, becoming the seas. Algae thrived in the extreme heat, poisoning the water. They died and fell in the trillions to the bottom of the rifts. Rivers washed sediments into the seas, until the organic remains of the algae were burried. As the pressure grew, so did the heat, until a chemical reaction transformed the organics into hydro carbon phossile fuels... oil and natural gas. A similar process occurred on land, which produced coal. It took nature about 5 million years to create the fossil fuels that the world consumes in 1 year. The modern way of life is dependant on this fosillized sunlight, although a surprising number of people take it for granted. Since 1860 geologists have discovered over 2 trillion barrels of oil. Since then, the world has used approximately half. Before you can pump oil, you have to discover it. At first it was easy to find and cheap to extract. The first great American oil field was Spindletop, discovered in 1900. Many more followed. Geologists scoured America. They found enormous deposits of oil, natural gas and coal. America produced more oil than any other country, enabling it to become an industrial super power. Once an oil well starts producing oil, it's only a matter of time before it enters a decline. Individual wells have different production rates. When many wells are averaged together, the combined graphs looks like a Bell curve. Typically, it takes 40 years after the peak of discovery for a country to reach its peak of production, after which it enters a permanent fall. In the 1950s Shell Geophysicist M. King Hubbert predicted that America's oil production would peak in 1970, 40 years after the peak of US oil discovery. Few believed him. However, in 1970 American oil production peaked and entered a permanent decline. Hubbert was vindicated. From this point on, America would depend increasingly on imported oil. This made her vulnerable to supply disruptions and contributed to the economic mayhem of the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_States http://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/ http://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/pdf/table_1.pdf