Energy's future: the world need never run out of energy. In fact, technology and private enterprise are poised to bring us an abundance of energy—if government will just get out of the way

New American, The, April 4, 2005 by Dennis Behreandt

The Rise of Industry

The industrial revolution may have seen the rise of all manner of innovation, but it was without doubt built on the back of King Coal, which replaced wood as the most dominant energy source. "Day by day it becomes more evident that the Coal we happily possess in excellent quality and abundance is the mainspring of modern material civilization," British economist William Stanley Jevons wrote in his book The Coal Question, published in 1865. "As the source of fire, it is the source at once of mechanical motion and of chemical change. Accordingly it is the chief agent in almost every improvement or discovery in the arts which the present age brings forth."

However, Jevons did not think that the rapid increase in coal production to support the "present age" was sustainable. He opined that England's rapacious appetite for energy would soon consume the nation's coal reserves. "I draw the conclusion that I think any one would draw, that we cannot long maintain our present rate of increase of consumption; that we can never advance to the higher amounts of consumption supposed." In the end, Jevons thought, England would run out of coal by 1900.

Jevons needn't have worried. As before, demand for energy made innovation worthwhile, and another form of fuel was brought to market. It was time to turn to crude oil.

This fuel had been known for centuries. The Romans burned it as a fumigant. In Borneo, it had been used for heat and light. But as the 20th century drew near, this fuel would become the lifeblood of the world's economy. Early wells were shallow, limited by insufficient drill technology. All that changed on January 10, 1901. Two brothers, Al and Curt Hammil, using a new rotary drill technology, bored through more than 1,000 feet of Texas soil on a small hill called Spindletop. Just when it seemed as if they should give up, the drill punctured a pressurized dome of fossil fuel. Methane gas came howling from the drill with a roar, followed by a geyser of oil.

There was more oil than anyone had ever imagined. Most wells of the day were shallow and produced from 50 to 100 barrels per day. Spindletop produced 100,000 barrels per day. A confluence of events was now occurring that would make oil the most important fuel in the world. The internal combustion engine would shortly be combined with a horseless carriage, and diesel and gasoline refined from crude oil would power the new transportation device. Coal had been used to power steam engines, but oil quickly became the fuel of choice for those too. "As oil prices fell, coal users began switching in droves to the more efficient oil," author Paul Roberts wrote in his recent book, The End of Oil. "Railroads converted their coal-fired locomotives to burn cheap Texas crude. Shipping companies, quickly recognizing that oil made their ships go faster--and also that it took up less storage room onboard than coal did --refitted cargo vessels to run on oil."

Since Spindletop, oil has been king. And, for a good part of the 20th century, the United States was both the top producer and consumer of oil. By 1946, however, the nation was actually consuming more oil than it produced, a condition that has persisted to the present. Since then, there has been an ever-present chorus of those claiming that the world is about to run out of oil.