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  • Gas crisis??....

    So I was watching Science channel the other night and they were talking seriously about what would happen if we ran out of oil. They were also talking seriously about there being a huge gas crunch by 2016 the way India and China have been getting in the game. Is this true? Is Oil really getting that scarce? I kind of figured it was a bunch of tree hugging propaganda. I know the Republicans want to drill Alaska and the Dems wont let them because theres only enough oil there for like 3 or 4 years and it will basically screw up the entitre eco system up there. I mean shit if gas is going to be 8 bucks a gallon in a few years what the hell are we all doing spending like crazy on hotrods that we wont hardly be able to drive? Does anyone have any REAL information on this? I dont want opinions, I want facts, and hard ones at that. I know some say theres tons of oil left and some say there isnt that much left whats the real deal?......discuss

  • #2
    Re: Gas crisis??....

    I heard on the news today that the U.S. oil reserves have more in them now than they have in 14 years. Said the price may go down close to 2.00 a gallon by spring. Maybe if all the Al Gore followers buy hybrids and electric cars it will give us Hot Rodders and our children and grandchildren a lot of gas for the future. ;D

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    • #3
      Re: Gas crisis??....

      In 2000, experts believed we had 40 years' worth left of oil. However, in 1960 the consensus was that there were only 38 years left.

      Part of this is the way they count oil reserves - these don't include oil that is thought to be impossible to drill for, and of course it doesn't include oil that we don't know about. So when the price of oil goes up, oil companies go looking for more oil and take another look at "impossible" oil deposits.

      There are a couple things going on in the oil market. One is that the war in Iraq has really put a crimp in their oil production - eventually someone's going to establish a stable government there and fix the oil production, so that's likely to be temporary. (The only question is how big of a bastard that someone will be.) The other biggie is that the Chinese and Indians have been using more gas - I think that one's permanent. And if enough of the Funny Hat Dictators' Club gets overthrown in the Third World, they'll probably start using more gas too. They also haven't finished fixing oil refineries from the last round of hurricanes, which is temporarily pushing gas prices up.

      So I think there is a chance for gas prices to go down in the next couple of years, but it would be wise to plan on them coming back up soon enough. But it's not like high gas prices will keep true believers from owning hot rods - after all, look how many people we have here from Europe were they already have $8 per gallon gas. It just means that it makes more sense to have a beater (or a motorcycle) for everyday use.

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      • #4
        Re: Gas crisis??....

        I heard a couple months ago that we will be half way through our oil at 2012....

        the issue isnt really running out, but drilling in spots where it takes more work to get the oil

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        • #5
          Re: Gas crisis??....

          2016 sounds a little hasty. I could probably write a several page article on it, but I neither want to nor want to look up and cite all the references I've seen at some point. Basically there are still large reserves off California, Alaska, and off the Gulf Coast. Alaska and California have been severely limited in development from Environmental groups. Gulf Coast reserves keep getting deeper, but as prices go higher it supports the increased cost of deep exploration and drilling (record revenues for oil companies as well as record spending in exploration and infrastructure that wasn't possible a few years ago, don't read just the headlines). On top of this in the last few years new techniques have been found to extract previously un-recoverable hydrocarbons from hard shales from Texas to Montana. It's still in development and exploration drilling around here has picked up significantly in the last few years. There is another thread that talks about converting just about any hydrocarbon into gasoline (specifically coal) which would only further increase reserves, especially if you include Canada.

          Now that's just in the United States, I've read numbers cited in USGS articles referring to possible reserves in Russia and Kazistan as being able to double current global reserves. Many international exploration groups are there drilling now (I've seen the job offers, incase you didn't know I'm a Mining Geologist).

          Then there are economic factors, at some point oil becomes to expensive and if no alternative energy source is sufficient then economies slow down or outright crash, and India's and China's would do this well before oil runs out effectively prolonging the drying out of global oil supply.

          Last report I read is the Saudia Arabia reserves are somewhere around 50% depleted since the 1950's, but new exploration is on going and they don't publish their findings regularly. Other middle east countries are pretty well off oil wise but I don't have numbers.

          Basically price is cyclical, some longer than others. I'm pretty young, but how many remember the oil crunch of the early 70's and then again in the early 80's? How many people at the time honestly thought gas would be dirt cheap again? Yet in '98 or '99 I paid 86 cents a gallon for regular, and for a few months was below a $1.00 (a barrel of oil was at $7, my old man was laid off after working 23 years in the oil industry). Now gasoline/oil is back up, adjusted for inflation it nearly, but not quite, hit the record price set in the early 80's, but is still acceptably priced (why else would all of us keep buying it?). It'll be a long long while before we start feeling the results of running out of oil. Right now it's just a supply issue, the infrastructure isn't there to produce more oil and even more so for gasoline refineries.

          I'm going to stop here :-\ If I get bored at work tomorrow maybe I'll find some relevant website sources (Government and University/Academic sources).
          Escaped on a technicality.

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          • #6
            Re: Gas crisis??....

            Hell, guys, they are still pumping oil out from under the Los Angeles basin. They have been since the 1920's. There are still hundreds of pumps in Kern Co, CA west of Bakersfield. California has never been known for it's huge oil reserves.
            BS'er formally known as Rebeldryver

            Resident Instigator

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            • #7
              Re: Gas crisis??....

              My Dad worked for an Oil Company in Long Beach, CA. Had several names over the years, but was the same place. It was costing them $12-$15 per barrel to pump out of the ground but they could only sell it for $7.
              Escaped on a technicality.

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              • #8
                Re: Gas crisis??....

                Deja Vu - - period

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                • #9
                  Re: Gas crisis??....

                  This is all good info, thanks silverbuick!!

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                  • #10
                    Re: Gas crisis??....

                    Silverbuick, this may be a dumb question, but isnt the earth still producing fossil fuel? Just wonder why it would have stopped. and yea , I know i'm oversimplfiying. Its how I roll. ;D
                    Reading , Pa
                    Good Guys rodders rep.
                    "putting the seat down is women's work" Archie Bunker.
                    Ban low performance drivers not high performance cars .

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                    • #11
                      Re: Gas crisis??....

                      Originally posted by ls7gto
                      Silverbuick, this may be a dumb question, but isnt the earth still producing fossil fuel? Just wonder why it would have stopped. and yea , I know i'm oversimplfiying. Its how I roll. ;D
                      It's actually a very good question. The simple answer is Yes, but the difference is in the Rate! The Mesozoic was way warmer than it is now, tropical conditions to the poles, this created several coinciding conditions that built the majority of our reserves today. Basically the oceans became stagnant, acidic and anoxic at depth. Basically whole oceans of swamp land. Fossil fuels are currently forming today mostly in swamps and similar environments. However because swamps are not sufficiently deep very little of the hydrocarbons formed from decay and compression actually become permanent reservoirs, most recently formed hydrocarbons (mostly Methane) escape to the atmosphere. Now this is Simplification at its best!

                      73Nova, perhaps the show you watched may have said a lot of this if it is the show I was thinking of.
                      Escaped on a technicality.

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                      • #12
                        Re: Gas crisis??....

                        I'll just have to run the Kia on Moonshine.

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                        • #13
                          Re: Gas crisis??....

                          philip deutch wrote :
                          The trend lines clearly indicate that Americans are becoming more energy dependent, not less so. In 1973, the United States imported 35 percent of its oil; by 2003, that proportion had jumped to 55 percent. In 2004, the United States consumed an average of 20.4 million barrels of oil per day, more than half of which was imported.

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                          • #14
                            Re: Gas crisis??....

                            One thing is for sure, there is not an indefinite supply of oil. Once the container runs out it is empty. As was said earlier the earth still produce fossil fuels but it does not produce new fossil fuel in the amounts we need it or fast enough. With that said, it is easy for us to rest easy feeling that we won't run out, the problem of course is bigger than that. Who will have it run out on them. We need to prepare now for that.

                            One more thing. We depend on oil for more than just the gas in our tanks. I was thinking the other day as I was at the doctor's office about the oil used in all the plastic stuff used in the medical field. Syringes, tubing, IV bags, and on and on. I would hate to have to go back to glass syringes for my insulin with needles you had to sharpen when they got dull. Boiling those things to sterilize them was a pain in the butt. Of course there are simpler things too, like plastic bags at the grocery store, etc., etc.

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                            • #15
                              Re: Gas crisis??....

                              So the bottom line is??? Theres alot of oil left or not?

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