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

"Ever since oil was first harvested in the 1800s, people have said we'd run out of the stuff," noted John Felmy, the chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute. These predictions have come to naught, says science journalist Kevin Kelleher. "In the 1880s a Standard Oil executive sold off shares in the company out of fear that its reserves were close to drying up," Kelleher wrote in the August 2004 issue of Popular Science. Similarly, in 1977, President Jimmy Carter warned that mankind "could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade." That wasn't true then, and it isn't true now.

It is, of course, true that there is more demand for oil today from other quarters of the world than there was previously. Whereas North America and Europe had been far and away the major consumers of energy throughout most of the last century, now emerging industrialized economies in Asia, notably China, are competing for the resource. And yet, the world is not running out of oil. There is, in fact, quite a large amount of oil remaining.

In the U.S. alone in 2003, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, proved reserves (meaning oil that can be recovered from existing reservoirs under current operational and economic conditions) totaled some 21.8 billion barrels. Worldwide, in 2003 proved reserves totaled 1.15 trillion barrels, enough to last for 41 years, according to the giant oil firm British Petroleum (BP). "Despite those who say we are about to run out of oil and gas, the figures in the review confirm there is no shortage of reserves," said BP chief economist Peter Davies.

At the current rate of consumption, it appears that the world's proved reserves will be consumed in approximately 30 or 40 years. This, however, may not be likely. Proved reserves are only those reserves that are feasibly recoverable, both economically and technologically, at a given time. As technology improves and demand increases, it will become practical to recover more oil, increasing proved reserves. In fact, this has happened in the past, and proved reserves figures have gone up. The total amount of the resource available, though not necessarily accessible under current conditions, is vastly larger than proved reserves. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, "technically recoverable resources" of crude oil in the U.S. alone total 105.05 billion barrels--five times the "proved reserves" subset.

It is worth considering, in addition, that many domestic resources have been placed off-limits by government regulation. In fact, according to the EIA, 78.6 percent of technically recoverable resources are located on federal land. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is a case in point. The ANWR sits upon vast amounts of recoverable oil on a par with the current largest U.S. oil field at Prudhoe Bay. The oil could be recovered with negligible impact to the environment of the area, yet opening the ANWR to drilling continues to be resisted.