How Much Energy Is in the Ground?
COAL and petroleum have been main sources of energy since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century. But they are energy sources that are generally classed as not renewable. So the burning question for us today is, How long can we depend on these fossil fuels before they are all used up?
Coal was the first to be exploited as Europe and the United States plunged into the industrial age. It came to be used in great quantities in the manufacture of steel and cement. Coal supplied power to railway locomotives on land and steamships at sea. We burned it to heat our dwellings and workshops. Beginning in the late 1800’s, coal was also used to run electric generators in central power plants.
When petroleum became available, its abundance and low cost led to its use in place of coal for many purposes. Importantly, the convenience of liquid fuel and the ease of igniting it promoted the rapid proliferation of automobiles for private use, trucks for hauling freight, and airplanes for rapid travel. Industrialized nations came to rely heavily on petroleum as an indispensable source of energy.
Profligate Use of a Resource
The promise of fabulous profits prompted enterprising oil drillers to get the first foothold in rich new oil fields. The natural gas that blew out of many wells was considered only a by-product, sometimes almost a nuisance. At the wellhead, its value was rated so low that it was often burned off merely to get rid of it. But with networks of pipelines, it could be profitably delivered to industrial plants and ordinary homes at very low cost.
In oil-rich countries the profligate use of energy was encouraged in every way. It was so cheap that waste was condoned, and conservation was not worth thinking about. Forward-looking persons realized that this could not go on forever; sometime the pools of petroleum must become exhausted. But the known reserves of petroleum at a given time were sufficient for many years’ use, and discoveries of new fields kept adding to the reserve faster than it was depleted.
Mass production of automobiles brought their price within the reach of nearly everyone, and automobile manufacturers grew to be giant corporations, vying to outsell one another with alluring gadgets added to each new year’s models. Governments taxed the sale of cheap gasoline and built superhighways everywhere. Cars were sold by the tens of millions to people eager to travel ever faster and farther. Oil companies followed the policy of looking for maximum immediate profits, and little concern was shown for the shortages that were bound to fall on a future generation. But now that generation has arrived.
Determining How Much Is Available
Earlier optimism about how long the petroleum would last was shattered by the political embargo imposed by the Arab nations in 1973. An international panel of experts in 1978 warned that the supply of oil would fail to meet the increasing demand at the latest within 20 years, and perhaps in as few as five. Recent events have prompted alarm that a permanent world shortage is likely by the early 1980’s.
Serious problems are suddenly upon us. The supply of oil is no longer determined solely by the technological ability to find and produce it. It is affected even more by political maneuverings. Governments have imposed complex tax structures and artificial price controls. Oil executives complain that there remains little incentive to undertake expensive drilling to find new fields or to build the new refineries needed to supply the relentlessly growing demand.
Multinational corporations have promoted the production of oil in once backward countries for export to industrial countries. Now the most plentiful supplies of oil and the largest consumers of oil are found in different, often antagonistic, political domains. The OPEC nations, complaining that they had been exploited by more powerful nations, banded together to restrict the supply and thus raise prices and enforce political demands. To stave off the threat of new embargoes, political leaders talk about conservation and alternate energy sources. However, their proposals to reduce speed limits on the highways, to turn down the thermostat on heaters, and greatly to increase the price of fuels meet with indifference and even indignant resistance.
But the fact must be faced. No matter what steps are taken to conserve and stretch out the supply, the world’s petroleum is already falling short of the demand. It is tantalizing to be told that the rock pores of exhausted oil pools still retain two to three times as much oil as has been pumped out, but this can be recovered only in small part by expensive methods. Even the discovery of large new fields, such as those in Alaska and in Mexico, can do no more than postpone for a few years the ultimate depletion of the world’s petroleum. It will inevitably run out in the next few decades. What then?
[Chart on page 10]
ENERGY FROM: USE PER YEAR: WHAT’S LEFT:
U.S. WORLD U.S. WORLD
Petroleum 38 107 175 3,300
Natural Gas 20 37 200 1,500
Coal 13 94 11,000 35,000
Hydroelectricity 3 12 Renewable
Nuclear Fission 3 5 230 670
TOTAL 77 255
The numbers in this table are in terms of the relative energy equivalent of each source. The units are quadrillion (1015) of British thermal units. One Quad is 1,000,000,000,000,000 B.T.U. One Quad is equivalent to 170 million barrels of oil, or one trillion cubic feet of natural gas, or 40 million tons of coal, or 2100 tons of uranium oxide and is sufficient to generate 100 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. The numbers in the first column are fairly exact. Those in the last two columns are estimates.