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)
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.
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.
Oooh I didn’t think about that… I’ll update the post
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.
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.
The way things are going we’re all going to be dead before it gets to that point
Probably because of all the dipshits in this thread specifically, acting like we don’t need to stop extracting and using oil.
At the current rate of oil consumption there are only 15 years left in the world. So it’s fine.
This means that the oil is going to run out in our lifetime.
Well, not in mine. So good luck with that!
I heard the same thing 30 years ago.
There are still unproven reserves waiting to be discovered.
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.
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
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.
I remember when they said there were 30 years left in the '90s.
By 2050, there might even be 70 years of oil left!
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.
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!
“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.
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.
