Potentially dumb-ass question re oil production

[Stat Brother]

From the BBC:-

Before the meeting, Saudi Arabia had pledged to lift daily quotas to 9.7 million barrels by the end of July, an increase of about 500,000 barrels since May.


So this is the daily oil production figures from just 1 country, it seems like a pooh load of oil.

What replaces the oil, in the earth?
Are we running the risk of imploding in x amount of years time?

like I said, potentially dumb question, and even more annoying as geography was the only subject, at school, it was actually good at.

 

[Dr Q]

yes that is daily production. Much of it from one field, which contains roughly 12% of the worlds proven resources!

Oil is usually replaced by water, although a good proportion of the oil in place remains there as there is insufficient pressure to get it out.

Are we at risk of imploding?? Well its gonna run out one day!

 

[Trufflehound]

What replaces the oil, in the earth?
Are we running the risk of imploding in x amount of years time?

I understand Shell and Exxon fill the void using the bodies of any environmental protesters they can catch.

 

[Man of Harveys]

I'm no petroleum geologist but my understanding is that at first, it gushes out of the ground under high pressure but as the field gets older, as Dr Q says, they pump in water.

Global oil demand is expected to average around 86.8 million barrels a day during 2008 btw.

 

[Stat Brother]

yes that is daily production. Much of it from one field, which contains roughly 12% of the worlds proven resources!

Oil is usually replaced by water, although a good proportion of the oil in place remains there as there is insufficient pressure to get it out.

Are we at risk of imploding?? Well its gonna run out one day!

I kind of guessed it was water.
I think it's the sheer scale that I'm not getting my head around.
As my next (obvious and dumb-ass) question could be:- where does all the water come from?

I know the planet isn't going to collapse in, on itself, but surely something has to 'give'. If a pressurised container deep undergrown is being emptied the surrounding structure will be weakened.

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

Very interesting question. To answer the question directly with a couple of numbers:

The cubic volume of the earth is 1,083,206,246,123,080,894,852 m3 (to give you an idea of how much that is - and this doesn't help - an average bath holds 0.2 cubic metres of water).

A barrel of oil contains 159 litres (a small bathful).
9.7m barrels of oil x 159 litres = 1,542,300,000 (1500 million litres a day for arguments sake) litres of oil extracted a day.
547,500 million litres of oil a year

Divide that by 1000 to get cubic metres gives roughly 550 million cubic metres a year.

Say that's been extracted for 30 years (and they haven't been going at this volume for that long), that gives 16,500,000,000 cubic metres.

So currently that is 0.0000000000152% of the earth's volume has been extracted as oil in the last 30 years.

If they keep going for another 70 years (and they won't be able to because it is likely to run out) that would be 0.0000000000507% of the earth volume.

We aren't going to implode just yet.

However, the bigger issue does relate to the staggering volume of oil that we are getting through. 547,500 million litres a year - that's 547,500,000,000.

Have you ever seen a small amount of oil burn? Try now to imagine a whole litre or a gallon burning. Imagine the smoke and the complaints from your neighbours!

And we consume 78 litres of oil a year for every one of the (approx) 7 billion people on the face of the earth.

That starts to make it clear how much crap we are pumping into the air that we breathe.

We're in a bit more danger of drowning or choking and mutating than we are of falling into the hollowed earth's core.

 

[Stat Brother]

Thanks Hans, just 1 question:-

WHAT?, do you just know those numbers or did you have to look it up? lol

Seriously though thanks I guess I was just letting my imagination run away, the thought of the Sahara sliding, egg timer like, into a giant hole, was beginning to make sense, to me. Welcome to my world!.

 

[Gully]

We're in a bit more danger of drowning or choking and mutating than we are of falling into the hollowed earth's core.

Walk round any British town centre during the daytime and it is clear that mutation has already begun, not sure if it can be reversed though, I call it the Dewsbury effect.

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

Thanks Hans, just 1 question:-

Factual stats fro reliable sources, then just maths.

Excel for the calculations - and it doesn't like decimal points with eleven 0's after it!

 

[desprateseagull]

i cant get why oil has shot up, when it doent cost the prducers any more to physically dig it up, so to speak?

 

[Gully]

The theory is that all the easy to get to oil has already been used up, the World is now extracting it from places that are harder to get to (deeper, more remote, etc) where the costs of drilling and transport are far greater.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

i cant get why oil has shot up, when it doent cost the prducers any more to physically dig it up, so to speak?

Supply and demand innit. More people chasing less oil

 

[Gwylan]

Both Gully and Voroshilov are correct but there's more to it than that. Oil is priced in dollars which is performing Turienzo-like against other currencies, throw in a few speculators gambling on oil futures and it's getting costly.

Where's Man of Harveys? He can answer questions like this before breakfast.

 

[Gazwag]

Would it really hurt for oil to run out today.

Oil companies will then delevop the super efficient electric motors which they hold all the patents for

Fewer wars, although religon would still exist

Less pollotion

No dirty patches on the drive way which last for years

No oil tanker drivers holding the country to ransom to get their massive wage hike



or am I being a bit to simplistic

 

[larus]

Would it really hurt for oil to run out today.

Oil companies will then delevop the super efficient electric motors which they hold all the patents for

Fewer wars, although religon would still exist

Less pollotion

No dirty patches on the drive way which last for years

No oil tanker drivers holding the country to ransom to get their massive wage hike



or am I being a bit to simplistic

In some way yes. However, the simple fact is we need to move away from our dependancy on oil for 2 reasons.

The most important being the fact that we are screwing up the planet by releasing all this shit into it. Whether we have done too much damage and the climate is going to gradually get warmer and what we do now won't affect it is still uncertain.

The second reason is that there is a limited supply of oil in the ground. It will run out. Technology will help to improve the yield from the wells (i.e. the percentage of oil which can be extracted before the well is unworkable), but it won't last another century, especially as the demand from the developing nations keeps rising.

Look at the figures quoted by Hans Kray. 78 litres of oil per person on the planet per year. How much pertrol do you put in your car a week?

Answer that point, then tell China/India that they need to cut their use/emissions!!!!

 

[Les Biehn]

If the oil ran out tomorrow it would be like Mad Max 2. It makes me wanna cry when I think how many cars there are on the road.

 

[Gwylan]

One thing that I'd like explaining to me is that we're currently consuming more oil than is being produced (according to BP's figures) and consumption is set to rise. We must be using up a lot of reserves - how long are they going to last? (And I know this is partly rhetorical as some countries don't give verifiable estimates of their reserves).

Actually, the real question I'd like to know is that given that we're nearing peak oil, why isn't more being done to wean off our carbon-dependent lifestyle? Larus is right: we have no grounds to tell China and India to reduce their demand until we make an effort to.

 

[Man of Harveys]

Both Gully and Voroshilov are correct but there's more to it than that. Oil is priced in dollars which is performing Turienzo-like against other currencies, throw in a few speculators gambling on oil futures and it's getting costly.

Where's Man of Harveys? He can answer questions like this before breakfast.

(I can't really; I just pretend. I've been getting away with that for 15 years now - please don't tell anyone I'm nothing but a hopeless blagger.)

Yeah the Dollar is weak and yes, some people have punted that the price in the future may remain high which can drag the complex up a bit. But Voroshilov is dead right: boringly, it's just a very simple question of industrialision in China, India and Brazil leading to increased consumption of oil, while importantly, the Saudis have been a bit secretive about exactly how much they have left (they're always happy to sustain the "speculators" canard, for example).

Opec used to "manage" the price - so if demand/prices went up, they'd pump more. But there's a strong suspicion (which is sort-of alluded to when politicians call for "greater transparency" on oil markets) that they just can't do that with demand increases on this scale.

The IEA's monthly report is brilliant on this stuff: International Energy Agency - Oil Market Report. If nothing else, it gives an idea of the scale of what we're talking about, and IMHO the unlikeliness of plants/batteries/whatever replacing it all in a hurry.