"'What If: Oil Runs Out' (Science Channel)" Topic

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Interesting fictional dramatization of what could happen if the world runs out of oil by 2016.

I think it is the perfect setting for near-future gaming!

CC

It will run out one day, but something else will replace it.

The Germans used synthetic oil made from coal decades ago, so that would work, as would alcohol, and electricity from nuclear power and solar energy/

C'mon. That doesn't make for good gaming! :)

CC

The Chinese have begun construction of the largest coal based synthetic oil processing centre in the world. It's located outside of Harbin.

The problem with that technology is that coal is one of the hardest things to mine. The miners who do it die. A lot. And it is very, very difficult to mine coal in a way that is not completely environmentally disasterous. The environmental pressure is hard enough on clean shaft based mining for metal— imagine large scale coal strip mining.

Something will indeed replace it, but that doesn't mean that our current cost per unit of energy will stay the same. The thing that replaces it might cost us ten times as much. Or it might not get developed fast enough.

'Running out of oil? No, not so much. But given that that's our end result, a more fun (meaning chaotic and destructive) way of getting there might be the global spread of a petroleum-eating bacteria, originally designed to clean up oil spills…

Oooooo. I like that.

CC

Read a news item today that the BP Prudhoe Bay pipeline corrosion was caused by oil eating bacteria feeding on oil sludge buildup on the pipe walls, their life and death cycle producing an acid that eats the pipelines. The sludge is supposed the be removed by a device called a "pig" that runs through the pipeline ("pigging") so the bacteria don't find a home. BP pinched pennies and threw away dollars.

I seen a program about this on BBC1 a while back, the shocking thing was that the story was centered around an American family, they couldnt use there "SUV"?? as "Gas" had hit the $5 USD per gallon mark..

Strange, its about about $10 USD over here in the UK already!

I don't think it's that much of a worry. We'll find something else to burn. If you can run a car on alcohol or cooking oil….

However Petroleum is used for a reason, fuel efficientcy. To get the same amount of power from alternative fuels, you must burn a lot more of them, so vehicles will be slower and require refueling more often. The main impact here I'd guess will be on airplanes. We may enter an age where it again takes weeks rather than hours to cross the Atlantic.

Guy

I have a novel called "Ill Wind" its about that very thing. A large oil spill off the coast is cleaned up with a bacteria. Only the bacteria wasn't quite perfected and it begins to spread. Pretty good read. The author escapes me at the moment but just check amazon for it.

I am sure that if we run out of oil a replacement will be found. Unfortunately, I can guarantee it will be something such as "Camel Butter" which all comes from the same region of the world as oil does now, and we will be back in the same boat with the same people!

But really, it isn't the power needs that are the big worry, since power alternatives are plentiful, if not always as efficient.

To get properly worried, do a bit of research into what else we pull out of a barrel of crude oil, what industries these substances are part of, and what the possible alternatives are. Fuel and power generation are the *easy* ones…

Here is the solution (or at least a big part of it):

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I thought we were out already! I mean as a kid in the 70s I was told we'd be out by 1990, in junior high scholl in the 80s I was told we'd be out by 2000, in college in the 90s I was told we'd be out by 2010. Oh, wait, we've got four more years! :)

Seriously though I think the "oil crises" is overrated. Most of the cost now is driven by speculation, not shortages, and a new field has been discovered in the Gulf of Mexico that could increase US reserves by 50%.

As a game mechanic or scenario for a campaign it could be fun, though I like the bacteria better. How fast will an M1 move on solar panels? :)

The only problem with growing plats to provide fuel is the ratio of land compared to what you need to run a car. Based on current technology (an cars are pretty inefficient) you need around 11 acres of `energy crops' to run on car for an average year. An of course you still need to spend energy refining the crops to a useable fuel.

Personally I think fuel cell technology is the way forward, combined with as many alternate generating technologies as you can find (solar, wind, tide, biofuels etc).

But what will we do without plastic for model kits?

Metal figures made from recycling SUVs…

Ya … it's not the many types of vhecles we drive it's the everyday things we use oil for that will hurt. Plastics are every where.

This subject is like global cooling…warming…whatever in that it makes for great scenarios and not so great science. Leaving reality aside, since this Science Fiction, how about a scenario where genetic modification results in carnivorous plants running rampant – gives added reason for the "28+"mm crowd to buy the very interesting plants on today's hobby news!

Or maybe the "Bugs" aren't aliens or nuclear spawned mutants but simply genetic side effects of bad research resulting in swarms of "giant" (for bugs) sized (say rat to small dog sized) intelligent ants/bees/wasps/Preying Mantis' with poison stings/bites, a bad attitude and a taste for mammal?

If we ran out of oil dramatically fast we could always use Coal powered trains and those miles of Railroad tracks in the US we have so carefully maintained…I can see the rules now "Train Wars!"

Infantry would be more powerful in a relative sense as would horse drawn artillery.

The "…well maintained…" tracks comment was intended as irony BTW.

Well, the Mad Max 2 movie (The Road Warrior in the US) starts with a "the oil ran out" backstory.

Also the BBC version of Day of the Triffids had the triffids originally being genetically engineered for biodiesel. I think the book version had them bred as a substitute for fish oils rather than mineral oils.

I'd mourn the loss of plastics and the escalating cost of refrigeration, more than I'd mourn the rising cost of petrol. But then I don't drive!

Energy companies has 'secret projects' for such a situation. Too many advances in technology since WW2 not to consider that alternative fuel sources have not already been developed.

Apologies for this eco warrior alert…

The trouble with alternative fuels is the fuel industries lobbying power to keep oil in production. Each year the same people make massive profit as long as they can keep digging up the black stuff. Why would you let alternative fuel sources into the mainstream if you dont own the ability to produce it?

The british government will now require that all petrol to be sold in the UK by 2010 to be 5% ethanol. this is a bad thing. It was decided to be 5% by car companies lobbying because 'it would otherwise damage car engines'. In the US the standard rate you'd mixed ethanol and petrol is 10% and that doesn't invalidate your cars guarantee.

E85 fuel is 85% ethanol and 15% petrol. This is used extensively in scandanavian countries but requires cars to be Flexi-Fuel Vehicles, i.e. you can put petrol and E85 into the same engine and it understands what you've done. Of course the best example of ethanol based fuel is Brazil.

And there are other alternative hydrogen fuels and electric cars which all show promise in a competitive market. Unfortunately the British government unfairly taxes these fuels differently making some of them more attractive than others.

However the main worry is the fuel inefficency of cars. The Miles per Gallon number is the most important one on any car. It determines the carbon footprint your exerting on the earths natural resources.

Almost all the energy alternatives researched are perfectly capable of being produced now. The problem, such as it is, is that they all currently are competitive only with oil when the production price of oil is about $50/barrel. The production price of oil is actually about $10, so the oil producers could lower their prices down to that at any point and swamp the nascent alternative fuels out of business. We won't see the alternatives until their production economics change or the actual production cost of petroleum gets considerably higher.

The perverse point is that, when petroleum does reach that point, the average cost of fuels will then be lower than it is today in an all-petroleum environment.

Plastics and other distillate products will then settle down to a price around the average. We won't run out of petroleum any more than we ran out of whale oil—we'll just move on to other alternatives when the economics dictate.

PVO

Also i think it was mr ford who originally designed cars to be run on Biofuel. so its not exactly a new idea…

Mulopwepaul
Does that production cost include the carbon levy?

"we'll just move on to other alternatives when the economics dictate."

Unfortunately the 'economics' currently doesnt include the environmental cost of send tonnes of C02 into the atmospehere.

In my admittedly jaundiced view, alternatives to petroleum as a fuel and as a raw materials base will appear when those who have the money to develop them (i.e. larger corporations) see a clear avenue to enormous profits in doing so, and govornments have worked out how to tax the crap out of the most critical products. Both business and govornment will first stage an extended period of denial, thereby minimizing the effects of R&D on the next Quarter's financial report. Thus, when the inevitable crunch does come, it will be a "crisis", justifying further removal of inconvenient impediments to "progress" like environmental and safety regulations, and another hit to the standard of living of ordinary citizens.

To minimize suspicion of my post being "political", which I think contemplation of Near Future settings must inevitably be, let me elaborate, in my professional guise as an anthropologist. It is arguable that a process like the one I've outlined with specific reference to the depletion of petroleum supplies has been going on at least since humans began intensifying agricultural technology beyond a simple "digging stick" level in the face of a desire to support an accustomed standard of living in the face of increasing populations and/or declining natural resources. "Well, my beloved people, the good news is that you will still be able to eat. The bad news is that from now on you'll have to work an extra 20 hours a week maintaining the new irrigation system, and another 5 hours supporting me and my family and assistants so that we have the time to, errrr, ah, supervise, yeah, that's it, supervise, your work. Oh, and by the way, we're going to conquer that city just upstream from us, before they have a chance to divert "our" water and put the squeeze on us. Mandatory military training starts tomorrow." More than just a few great wargame scenarios have developed down through the millinea in the face of these kinds of cultural changes.

But, science and politics aside, what about the gaming?

CC

Well, maybe Victorian Science Fiction will be moved into the Modern/Historical category? LOL!

there must be plenty of oil under antarctica, still.

Interesting fictional dramatization of what could happen if the world runs out of oil by 2016.

1. The sheiks would have to get jobs.

2. The government would have to find a way to tax sunlight.

3. Polyester suit prices would skyrocket.

4. PCs would have to be made of aluminum.

5. Steel wheeled tires on electric cars.

Let them eat cake???

You can always use butter.

Iknow. Not funny.

We are not going to run out of Oil there is evidence being played down by the Enviro whakos that oil is re-filling once "empty" fields! Oil is like the blood of the planet and somewhere deep inside the crust of the earth it is forming now. It is not a "fossil" fuel left over from dinosaurs! But we could have some cool games based around the "At the center of the earth" story. The mutant/crab-people/Lizard/moorlocks come to the surface of the Earth to combat those who are stealing all of the oil which they need for their underground civilization.

"Unfortunately the 'economics' currently doesnt include the environmental cost of send tonnes of C02 into the atmospehere."

That's as may be, but it's not directly related to the notion that we're going to "run out" of petroleum.

Preferring other energy sources for ecological reasons is a separate question from the availability of petroleum. The case for carbon taxes will have to be made independently, in terms of demonstrated costs.

PVO

Grenadier 1 has been reading too much sci fi already by the sounds of it.

Tricks

Horsed cavalry will make a comeback!

@Tricks- actually, there was research done fairly recently by a team of Russian scientests that did claim that the 'Fossil Fuel' idea was wrong, and oil was a by product of other geological processes- I haven't read the research myself, and I probably don't have the background to say if thier idea has merit or not.

-Will

as oil gets more expensive it'll become economically viable to develop the oil shale in canada and yellowstone I heard. There's more oil there than in the middle east, just mixed with sand. So they just got to clean the saind out of it. As to driving SUVs- well…that was never such a good idea was it?
In east asia the biggest new eco fuel is made from palm oil or something. Rape seed oil is another good alternative.

Ture enough, oil sand and shale will mean some oil will be available if expensive.

Oil is not only for energy though; As the source of complex hybrocarbon chains it supplie steh raw material for a lot of plastics and such. Plants and sequestered carbon dioxide will have to be used as sources for those, which will make some interesting operations around the world.

actually, there was research done fairly recently by a team of Russian scientests that did claim that the 'Fossil Fuel' idea was wrong, and oil was a by product of other geological processes- I haven't read the research myself, and I probably don't have the background to say if thier idea has merit or not.

It's an interesting theory, but hard to prove. That some oil fields are "regenerating" is NOT proof of this theory by any means, as anyone with an inkling about the realities of oil exploration or how subsurface fluids and lithological structures look and act will tell you.

The whole "lifeblood of the planet" thing is rather more "Enviro whako" than current scientific thought, by the way.

If we run out of oil, we won't have any plastic to make dice with!

I'm willing to live without my car. Live without dice? No way!

We have got to demand that the government begin funding alternative dice technologies immediately! Everyone, write a letter to your congressmen right now!

I'm stocking up now! When the crisis hits, the value of my horde of dice will pay off big time!

The old-timers among us will remember that some games published in the mid-late 70's did not have dice in them.

Instead, they had a little note in them that said that they were not including dice, due to the oil crisis, to keep the price of the game down. The note told you to just use your dice from another game.

I think that it was either SPI, or Avalon Hill. Anyone else remember this?

I ran a scenario where HB corporate security personnel raided an illegal biodeisel plant. The "boys" failed to recover the renegade scientist and the "still", but they did manage to detain a number of "Eco-terrorists" and ship them to a certain large SW state for acts against the nation.
As for the term "Whako", I think I'll use that now for those anti-American, economy car driving, trash recycling, alternate energy consuming environmentalists that are a blight against our nation's major corporate entities.

prouty.org/oil.html

a Good read indeed.

Im convinced Oil is not a Fosil Fuel…….

prouty.org/oil.html

a Good read indeed.

Im convinced Oil is not a Fosil Fuel…….

That page reads like conspiracy theory sites generally do. Poor use of terminology (like the term "organic"), references to inexplicably hard-to-find and often vaguely described resources, and "quotes" from "experts".

While there *might* be a case for deep earth oil origins, this page does a rather poor job of trying to prove it…

I worked for an environmental consulting company for a few years, and did read some interesting (but not conclusive) work that challenged whether or not Fosil Fuels are, in fact, based on fosils. There just some problems in the math on how much algae and other dead biomatter it would take to produce the amount of fuel we have found to date, and how much is still out there.

I don't buy this "life blood of the planet" stuff… but I do think that more credible research needs to be done before theories about oilfield regneration can be discounted.

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By the way, does anyone know of an alternate fule for JET FUEL? I recall some stuff a few years back about how they haven't really made a good alternative Jet Fuel, and I was wondering if that had changed.