Peak Oil: The Crisis, The Ongoing Calamity, The Fact

The reason why humans as a race have evolved so rapidly in terms of development and knowledge is due to the fact that we have been able to get cheap energy. This cheap energy was obtained from a resource we all know today as Oil. The industrial revolution was sparked by oil, and let’s face it, the key source of energy even today is OIL!

Everything we do revolves around oil. The world economy is largely based on oil; we get power from oil, most commodities in the world have plastic in them (which is made from oil) etc.

The human race is so dependent on oil that if it were to run out the world will come to an abrupt stop! Now, this is where the problem arises… oil is not infinite, it is not renewable and will therefore run out! We are consuming oil at a ridiculously rapid pace! You’ll see what I mean when you look at the oil clock at http://www.oildecline.com/; it is predicted that at our current usage rate, oil will run out in less than a hundred years.

Currently, more and more oil plants are being built and therefore oil extraction rates are increasing globally, however it is not the same rate of increase that we saw a couple of years back, and this is because of what is known as peak oil. Let’s look at this graph below:

We can see on the graph a bell curve. On the vertical axis is the rate of extraction in millions of barrels per day while the horizontal axis is time. Peak oil is when oil extraction has reached its maximum (which is the peak on the graph) and after the peak oil the inevitable happens, oil production declines and more effort has to be put in order to suck up the little oil that remains; an alternative explanation of peak oil is from HowStuffWorks.com:

“Imagine a carafe filled with coffee. Imagine pouring cup after cup without effort until the stream of java begins to trickle. Eventually you even have to severely tilt the carafe in order to drain the dredges. Peak oil is that last full and flowing cup before the final decline begins.”

This is what is happening in the US whose oil production peaked in 1971 as shown on the graph and since then production has been declining. When the production starts declining, the oil price goes up which has a domino effect on all the other commodities increasing crazily increasing their prices; this domino effect is what is commonly known as “inflation,” and it is inevitably going to get worse.

Once peak oil is reached, the oil extraction rate will decrease and will not increase no matter how many oil extraction facilities are put up.

The world is on the verge of peak oil with many locations such as the US already past it, therefore we must start the move away from oil and look into other means of energy as soon as possible!

The demand for oil is increasing, but the oil itself is decreasing! The facts are out there to prove it! We cannot afford to overlook this problem! The future of generations to come, the future of the HUMAN RACE depends on an alternative to oil!

Ladies and gentlemen, let us use what is left of this valuable resource wisely and do what we can to aid development of an alternative form of energy, for while it (oil) may have been the single largest contributing factor to the development of mankind, its abrupt diminishment could destroy us all.