Oil

Where does it come from?

Let me start off with a bit of embarrassment. As a child (way back when), I was taught that oil was a fossil fuel and it came from dinosaurs dying off and then long processed underground which turned it into oil. Hey, we still see the dinosaur statues the Sinclair gas stations have! So perhaps it’s understandable why a child’s mind locked onto this and never questioned it.

Doing a bit of research, I came across a website that says “Crude oil is formed from the remains of dead organisms (diatoms) such as algae and zooplankton that existed millions of years ago in a marine environment.” (this occurred before dinosaurs existed)

Another website mentions that in the 1950s some Russian scientists questioned this and proposed a theory of “abiogenic” petroleum that seeps upward from deep underground. These sources have been found but never produced a commercially viable source. Since this process also takes thousands of years to create oil, there is a limited amount of oil in the Earth, we just don’t know how much or how hard it will be to extract it.

A few years ago, BP made an estimate that if no new oil sources were developed, the existing reserves from what is currently being extracted would run out in 2067. Naturally this won’t be like hitting a brick wall since we are still developing more sources and usage continues to go up too. If alternative energy sources boom, that could also impact this date.

Remember of course that “doomsday” predictions are notoriously inaccurate!

My advice is to pay attention when fuel prices rise extremely rapidly (and not just a temporary spike). Once we hit a point where fuel prices continually are rising rapidly, then as individuals we’d really better come up with a “plan B”. I’ll admit that I’m a bit lazy about this as it shouldn’t really occur until the end of my lifetime.

As I mentioned in my last article, the cost to extract oil has been rising for the past one hundred years so I would expect fuel prices to continually climb, thus we need to distinguish between an alarming (extended) increase in cost vs just gradual steady increases.

On a slight tangent, our government has been increasing the budget for nuclear fusion. The 2024 appropriations bill allocated $1.48 billion for this research. Maybe this is why there hasn’t been more of a push for current fission reactor development? Perhaps we are hoping we can finally solve the fusion challenge and develop a safe source of immense power? This seems wiser to me than burning money on solar panels, electric cars (switch to electric cars after you have good source of electricity) and planting wind turbines.

Imagine what an advantage this would give the USA if we can develop fusion reactors before anyone else in the world can produce them! Maybe the future isn’t so dim after all?