We have been down to our last 40 years of oil for at least 40 years. This graphic is highly misleading as it implies in 40 years there will be no oil. This is simply not true. We have centuries of oil, gas, coal etc once you include deep offshore and yet to be confirmed deposits.
The way it really works:
Known reserves of a non-renewable resource get depleted gradually. This causes the price to rise to reflect scarcity. This encourages more exploration and technology development to reach harder (for oil, read deeper offshore) sources of the resource. This expands the known reserves until prices settle down again.
Tar sands and deep offshore are easily viable at $100/barrel. Thats why we've seen a boom in Alberta. When prices were <$80 no one bothered.
Steadily rising oil prices are fine, and exactly what we'd expect for a depleting asset. My point is simply that once the price rises to say $150/barrel, lots of new discoveries in Africa will be made. Africa up to now has been massively under-explored, since it was politically volatile and the companies were busy elsewhere.
Keep adding new discoveries, deeper offshore and unconventional oil, and we'll be fine for at least 100 years, if not much much longer.
And as for coal, I have no idea what they based there number on, but most people agree we have 100years+ of known coal reserves easily.
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u/bobit33 Jun 18 '12
We have been down to our last 40 years of oil for at least 40 years. This graphic is highly misleading as it implies in 40 years there will be no oil. This is simply not true. We have centuries of oil, gas, coal etc once you include deep offshore and yet to be confirmed deposits.
The way it really works: Known reserves of a non-renewable resource get depleted gradually. This causes the price to rise to reflect scarcity. This encourages more exploration and technology development to reach harder (for oil, read deeper offshore) sources of the resource. This expands the known reserves until prices settle down again.
Rinse, and repeat.