The claim oil will soon run out is so common, it has become a cliché, on a par with “The end is nigh!”, which is often scrawled on sandwich boards worn by bearded men dressed in sackcloth.
Naturally, the 40-year-old Green movement joyfully joined the chorus predicting that oil would run out in 1994. To be fair, others who should have known better joined the doomsday predictors – some even within the oil industry.
Over the years, this idea embedded itself in the public mind. Ironically, it also fuelled a new rush to find more oil.
Such was the panic at one time that BP felt compelled to make its own prediction: Oil would reach its peak in 40 years, that is around 2020. BP balanced this by saying that even when oil ran out there was plenty of gas to take over.
Hunting for customers
BP will clearly be proved wrong on its first prediction, but it was right on the second. There is so much natural gas that Qatar, which sits on a gigantic gas field, is today frantically hunting for customers, the oil price is hovering in the $30 (R460) per barrel range, shale oil is in abundance, though expensive, and horizontal drilling (rare in 1970) has opened up new oil sources.
No one has so far touched the Arctic Circle, Antarctica or the Falkland Islands. A massive new field has been found in southern England and the African Great Lakes region has more oil, so far untouched. So, oil may, or may not, run out 60 or more years into the future and then gas could take over. The Green lobby has recently been silent for obvious reasons. It is perhaps why it has put its hopes on fears of climate change allegedly created by oil companies releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
To get back to the predictions, the first recorded cry of alarm came in 1909. This was the time when petroleum oil, in the form of kerosene (paraffin) was vital for lighting the homes of millions.
Here is a newspaper prediction from 1909: “… the supply will last (only) about 25 or 30 years… If production is curtailed and waste stopped, it may last until the end of the century (1999). The most important effects of its disappearance will be in the lack of illuminants (paraffin – at that stage the electric light bulb was not considered for general use).
“Animal and vegetable oils will not begin to supply its place (whale oil, olive oil, etc). This being the case, the reckless exploitation of oil fields, and the consumption of oil for fuel should be checked.”
Ten years later came the next doom-laden prediction. This time that by 1916 oil production would plateau. Newspapers came up with this: “In meeting the world’s needs, however, the oil from the US will continue to occupy a less and less dominant position, because within the next two-to-five years the oil fields of (the US) will reach their maximum production and… we will face an ever increasing decline.”
In 1937, with the world on the brink of war, the US Senate heard that the US oil supply would only last another 15 years.
Six years later with World War II at its peak in Europe, the doom prophesies were getting serious. The Oil and Gas Journal gloomily commented: “Since 1938, discoveries of new oil have not equalled withdrawals, in any single year…”
Wise to previous predictions that were wrong, the journal had the grace to admit that there was a good chance that discoveries in Texas would put off doom for a while. It did. It is still doing so.
Then came 1945. Now the doomsayers said there were only 13 years left before oil ran out, but it was time to look under the sea. You would think by now that anyone predicting the end of oil would know it to be a losing game, but no. In 1956 no less a person than a geologist was saying that the top of the graph would be 1966 or at best 1971. Oops. That was about the time that the North Sea discoveries were made.
This did not put off the pessimists, even though by this time the Saudi Arabian oilfields were proving a bonanza, Iraq was pumping huge amounts, Venezuela was doing the same and the Colombian fields were being explored. Kuwait had found oil on almost the same scale as Saudi Arabia, and Angola was in the queue.
In 1966, the doom prediction was due to come true 10 years ahead. Another six years went by. In 1972 experts were saying there was only 20 years of oil left in the US and maybe 40 years in the rest of the world, that is doomsday in 2011.
Five years on the US government said that by 1990 everything was downhill. The date came and so did horizontal drilling and the shale oil and gas revolution.
In 1980, “stressing the need for conservation”, a Dr Hans Bethe, a physicist, not a geologist, said the world would reach its peak oil production before the year 2000.
New twist
Production of oil worldwide would then drop to zero in 2020. Only rigorous conservation could stretch the world’s oil supply to the year 2050 (by which time he would not be around to see it). Next up, in 1996 there was a new twist in the predictions when no less than a Nobel Laureate (chemistry) joined in.
He said when oil ran out sometime after 2020, developing countries would bear the brunt of the chaos: “…developing countries will ultimately be left in the dark, and developed countries will struggle to keep the lights on. Conflict is inevitable.”
So there you have it. According to the best and the brightest there have been at least 10 occasions when the end of the petroleum age was predicted, each time full of doom and gloom with the latest prophecies throwing in the possibility (actually expressed as a certainty) that the underdeveloped would bear the brunt of the foreseen chaos. If this litany of error does not make panic over climate change premature, it is difficult to see what will.
Common sense says that people who claim to see into the future are deluded and arrogant, or both. Equally, prophets of doom, bearing sandwich boards or not, forget that humans are infinitely adaptable, particularly to the weather, and technologically inventive to a remarkable degree.
* Keith Bryer is a retired communications consultant.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
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