PLENTIFUL ENERGY

But the question that follows immediately is, will it have to? We need to go a
little deeper into the present energy situation, both in the world and in the U.S., and
examine estimates and trends that allow a look into the future. The future we are
talking about is not some distant time; action or inaction now will affect it
importantly.
Energy fuels national economies; it sustains all civilized life. Against this is the
reality that the source of most such energy is in the earth‘s crust; it‘s a limited
endowment of the fossils of past life. That is the basis for 90% of the energy
generated in today‘s world. These fuels are beginning to need help—new sources
are needed. The question is how much and how soon. The situation for each fossil
fuel is somewhat different.
4.4 The Relative Rarity of Carbon-Based Resources
What Daniel Yergin termed ―in the background‖ are the hard facts of the present
status of the world‘s energy resources. It is impossible to overestimate their
importance. Fossil fuels produce the world‘s energy today. Unlike minerals, this
resource was not endowed at the creation of the earth and distributed more or less
uniformly around the world. This is a resource of finite amount that had to be
created by living organisms. And it needed fortuitous combinations of geological
and ecological circumstances that are rather rare in geological history. Under these
conditions and no other, occasional deposits of carbons and hydrocarbons were
created, trapped, and left for use today. But considering the extent of the earth‘s
surface, although familiarity makes them seem commonplace, such deposits must
be regarded as unusual and rare.
Their finite nature, in the face of ever rising populations, makes shortage
inevitable. All fossil fuels are in finite deposits and all are measurable in amount.
Population and the consequent demand for energy are growing exponentially, and
there is little to suggest this is to change. When an exponential demand is to be met
by a finite supply, at some point the supply will be insufficient. That is a simple
statement of mathematical fact. The question, of course, is when. Will world energy
supply reach that point decades or centuries into the future, is it just a few years
away, or is it happening now? A great deal depends on the answer.
World crude oil production depends heavily on the output from a remarkably
small number of fields. Oil fields have lifetimes measured in decades. The huge
ones were discovered decades ago. There are some forty thousand oil fields in the
world today, but only 360—these are the aging giant fields, each of which once
held more than five hundred million barrels of recoverable oil—supply 60% of
today‘s low-cost crude oil. Only 120 of them supply nearly 50%. Just fourteen
fields, which are on average close to fifty years old, produce 20%, four of them
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