So where is the end?

Oil is just energy storage. The sun and by extension wind and falling water and waves and what not provides all the energy we could use, but we don't have a terribly good way to store it right now. So we use energy that was previously stored. The earth continies to store energy the same way, but not as fast as we're extracting it.
Producing energy is trivial, storing it, especially in a form that is as safe and energy dense and gas is really hard.
We'll keep burning oil for as long as that problem persists. After that we'll continue to produce for a long time because very long chain hydrocarbons are easier (cheaper) to drill for than synthesize.

dculberson wrote: I think that's NASA's ploy to get more funding. I've often heard said that if they discovered oil on another planet that we'd have a fleet on the way to spread democracy in a heartbeat. Maybe NASA's banking on that. [/sarcasm in case you're not sure.]

Well, we’re also going to need to come up with 14.7 times as much oxygen by mass as the new found oil in order to burn it (those pesky Stoich ratios don't budge an inch for nobody).

I’ve never heard of pools of liquid oxygen being discovered…probably because hydrogen is so prevalent that any oxygen lying around quickly gets converted to water. If we do electrolysis on sea water to get the required oxygen, we’ll have a metric E36 M3 load of hydrogen left over not to mention that the power required to perform the electrolysis could have just been used instead of the hydrocarbons in the first place; durp.

Honestly, I think were only a few decades away from oil being so inferior to alternative energy sources that having it will be considered a liability.

“What’s that, your country is flush in oil, we’re so sorry you’re got that messy junk to deal with.”

I work in the energy industry, and until a few years ago, produced products for the oil drilling industry. To say we are low on oil is incorrect. I remember a Shell exec. telling us once that there is an abundance of oil that is easy to get, more than has been removed, but the land has been declared off limits. In oil that is more difficult geographically, there is far more of it, maybe 200 to 300 years of world wide supply in the US alone according to him.

Now as to whether it is damaging to the land to get it, that's a different story. But a shortage of oil, not really.

Having said that, there are plenty of companies like ours that look constantly at alternative energy means. We have made huge strides in alternative energies, and will make larger ones in the near future. We are nowhere near replacing gas and oil at the moment however, but I'd be willing to bet that within 20 years the landscape will be so different as to be unrecognizable.

If development keeps up at its current pace, I foresee oil usage drop dramatically in the not to distant future. At that point, oil prices will naturally rise and alternatives will continue to decline in price.

racerdave600 wrote: If development keeps up at its current pace, I foresee oil usage drop dramatically in the not to distant future. At that point, oil prices will naturally rise and alternatives will continue to decline in price.

That's not how economics works.

Besides plastics that others have already mentioned, our food supply is effectively oil-based as well. We can only feed all the people because of oil that is the base for fertilizers. Agree that running out of oil is not the issue, it is running out of good quality, easy to extract oil. At some point it will no longer be worth to extract any more.

Every decade or so we get the warning.

pinchvalve wrote: August 13, 2532 at 3:32 pm.

You're wrong. I was told it was at 2:32pm EST.

codrus wrote:

racerdave600 wrote: If development keeps up at its current pace, I foresee oil usage drop dramatically in the not to distant future. At that point, oil prices will naturally rise and alternatives will continue to decline in price.

That's not how economics works.

It is when the alternatives are used more than oil. When the demand for oil decreases, the cost of getting it out of the ground will rise. The less that is pumped out of the ground, the costlier it is to do so. As the costs rise so does what you pay for it. By the same token, if other sources of energy are widely used, their costs will drop. At some point there will be a crossover. Given the pace of development, this will happen.

Unless we see miraculous and practical improvements in battery tech (like go 300 miles on a 20 minute charge with affordable equipment type of improvements), we'll probably just start making our own carbon neutral gasoline. It's already a proven (and old) technology using coal or natural gas, not a huge step to use captured carbon (probably from biomass or seawater) and hydrogen from water. This could be powered by renewables or nuclear.