Oil Shortage

The age of cheap and easy oil may be coming to an end. The incredible price fluctuations (mostly upwards) have created a heated debate amongst businesses, politicians, and the general public. This debate of energy supply may be one of the most important social issues today. This paper will cover the possible consequences of an energy shortage, as well as present opposing viewpoints of the likelihood of a future oil shortage.

The modern industry economy is heavily dependent on access to cheap oil. It is important to understand that this debate does not concern itself with whether or not oil will completely run out, but rather the acknowledgement that a significant decline in the availability of oil will increase real prices and cause a drop in the standard of living, possibly catastrophically so.

For instance, one must consider the effect that increasing oil prices have on transportation costs. For instance, about 2/3 of the oil supply in the United States is used for transportation, which makes sense when one considers that every consumable good must travel from the point of production to the point of consumption, usually with many steps in between. A 1% increase in fuel prices results in a 0.4% increase in freight costs (exponentially), thus a 10% rise in fuel prices would correspond to a 40% rise in freight costs. An increase in freight costs would cause an increase in price for goods. By far, transportation (automobiles, air travel, etc.) is the most directly impacted industry by increasing oil prices brought about by dwindling supplies.

Very closely related to the transportation industry is the agricultural industry in terms of petroleum shocks. Modern agriculture is fed by oil-based pesticides, natural gas produced fertilizers, and tractors and transport vehicles fed by gasoline or diesel engines. According to the Energy Bulletin, a leading UK energy science magazine, food travels an average of 1,500 miles from the point of growth to where it is eaten in the United States. Also, for every one calorie of food consumed in the United States, 10 calories of oil were required to produce that food.

Transportation sectors and agriculture are not the only industries dependent heavily on petroleum. Modern medicine requires extensive quantities of cheap oil for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and plastics. Water distribution requires synthetic chemicals for purification. A majority of consumer goods are made at least partially from plastics.

In short, most industrialized economies today depend on an abundance of cheap oil, and almost none more so than the United States. Now that such a dependency has been established, we can now consider the theories posed about whether or not oil may be in short supply.

There exists a multitude of theories about the future of oil, concerning the future supply as well as the potential for some functions in society provided for predominantly or completely by oil to be assisted or replaced by an alternative. Most of these theories can be placed into two categories: the Optimistic Theory of Oil and the Pessimistic Theory of Oil. My personal opinion is that the Pessimistic theories are more accurate, at least in near-term scope, than those of the optimistic side.

According to the Optimistic Theories, the scenario in which the world finds itself is not at all bleak in regards to the apparently dwindling oil supplies or the rising energy prices that have been seen over the past few years. Economic growth will not be significantly affected by energy constraints. The lack of concern can be attributed to one or more proposed theories.

One such theory is the abiogenic petroleum origin theory, also known as the abiotic theory, according to which oil and other petroleum compounds are formed from enormous carbon deposits buried deep underground. These carbon deposits, in theory, still leak petroleum upwards through the mantle, and thus are “replenishing” the deposits of oil that have been extracted as well creating new deposits. In short, abiotic theorists propose that the supply of oil is far more immense than believed by geologists who hold that oil was caused by decaying organic matter over millions of years.

Other optimists believe that hydrocarbon exploration efforts in the future will reveal at least one more mega-sized field (field containing more than 100 billion barrels), which would significantly boost the reserves of the globe (Lynch). This exploration will come about as a result of increased capital investment resulting from strong market forces (Wood). In brief, some optimists opine that oil exploration has been insignificant in recent decades, either because oil interests want a low statement of known global reserves (see below) or because the economic incentives to find massive additional sources of hydrocarbons have not been sufficient for such an undertaking.