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

The idea that oil is not a fossil fuel can only ever be held by those who don't actually have anything to do with oil exploration. Basically the way I find oil (as an exploration geologist) is entirely based on the basic science that shows that oil is a fossil fuel. If it were not I simply wouldn't be able to do my job.

Oilfield regeneration is very simple. In most cases the reservoirs are not the source rocks. In the case of the north sea much older carboniferous rocks are the sources and there is migration into the reservoirs. There is no need for some 'life blood' idea.

Shame these people don't do some very basic science instead of jumping to outlandish conclusions.

Tricks

Renewable energies will work just fine if/when we're forced to use them. Burning plants (bio diesel), rays from the sun (solar panels), and waterwheels (hydro) will always work.

If every building had solar panels, plants, or wind farms on top of them we'd have enough energy for everyone. There's also geothermal heat also.

We can at this very moment make a house that is 100% energy independent, including powering the car. It just costs a bunch of money to invest in it. The upkeep isn't any more expensive than normal house repairs.

I just hope the transition period is smooth, and the people in charge make good decisions for the updated infrastructure.

I missed the show …I very much wanted to see the What If: The Oil Runs Out on the SC but missed it …Anyone know where I can get a copy or will it be aired again……

Please m-mail me mectlc@gamil.com

I missed the show …I very much wanted to see the What If: The Oil Runs Out on the SC but missed it …Anyone know where I can get a copy or will it be aired again……

Please E-mail me mectlc@gmail.com

We have the prefect renewable resource already, but for some reason some people want to put a stop to it. They claim it is one of the causes of global warming. It's called methane, with the amount of garbage the human race produces we have an unlimited supply of it.

And strangely some scientists want to find a way to stop cows from making it.

But I still say global warming is a farce. They've rediscovered a silver mine in the Alps, I say rediscovered because the snow has melted off enough so that they can find it again. How do we even know the Earth isn't just returning to the climate it's normally supposed to be?

They don't know, they've only been watching the climate closely for around 100 years. A blink of an eye in the scale of the planet's time.

And if the oil is running out, why are some oil wells thought to be empty found to have still more oil in them?

A better scenario would be a newer and better fuel source is discovered and a fight over that.

The problem is not oil "running out". There's still plenty left. The problem is when a static or declining supply has to feed a growing demand. Many people believe we are already at or very near the point of Peak Oil: when world supply cannot meet increasing demand. Demand increases every year, especially with China and India fast developing. Yet, new oil fields are barely being discovered anymore (oil field discovery peaked in the 1960's). What saved us from the 1970's crunch was the oil field in the North Sea came online, but that field has now peaked. No new field as large as the North Sea field has been found for decades.

I think we're in trouble in the near term, especially in places like the US that are totally dependent on oil and there's little desire to go to alternatives (until a huge crisis occurs). As oil prices rise relentlessly, the economy will take a nose dive. We cant switch over to other energy sources without massive infrastructure changes. None of the alternatives, even collectively, give us near the amount of energy that oil does.

The best hope is gradual change over to alternatives and massive energy conservation, and praying that the oil supply doesnt decline rapidly (as it appears to be doing in Mexico's largest oil field, Cantarell-- the faster you extract oil, the faster it declines).

NEWS! NEWS! NEWS!

Get ready. National Geographic has a new show that airs this Monday:

"Aftermath: World Without Oil"
link

Enjoy! Hope it sparks lots and lots of cool gaming scenarios.

Dan

I was a teenager during the 70's when we had the "first" oil crisis, a gas station attendant was shot and killed at the corner station just down from my home, by some guy who had been waiting for hours to get gas, why because the station had run out of gas.

Oil fields refilling as a renewable source I don't think so, It's just oil in the rock just seeping back into the void, that they just didn't get the first time, ever seen an experiment were they boiled water out of a rock, same thing but in this case it's oil.

Internal combustible engines are the worse use of energy ever, better then 80% of it's energy is wasted turning over the engine, transmission, drive shaft and axle, long before it even starts to turn the tires, the bigger the vehicle the bigger the waste. Small compact car getting 32 MPG vs SUV getting what's top end 22 MPG? vs a go cart running for about two hours on a gallon or so, none of them are getting the best use of this energy that's wasted, same holds true no matter what you pour in it gasoline, bio fuel, whatever, eclectic motors only 20% is wasted to do the same work, so one of two things can be done make better engines period, or go with electric motors, or you can just continue to lets say throw away 80 cents to the dollar, I don't know about you but that could buy lots and lots of minis for me, I don't care which they do, just do it.

Oil companies are going to suppress any changes to their profits point blank, and will run spins from spin doctors to suppress anything new, if there is the smallest draw back to something new out there, their going to make sure you know all about that draw back and focus on it though all media and little to nothing else that's positive for that product. Same hold for electric companies to a gentleman put up a ten wind mill wind farm in Wyoming I believe, and is getting about $50,000 a year from the electric company there, when another gentleman tried the same thing in Oklahoma they pass a law backed by the electric company there that no matter how much electricity he produces he'll only get $300 USD a month max.

now off my soap box
gaming wise, have corporate agents running around taking out other corporate companies, or taking over small sites, or take them out, make hits on CEO and their body guards, to whittle out the competition.

Video games have addressed this scenario in that last couple of years.

Frontlines: Fuel of War pits a western alliance against a "Red Star Union" for control of the last drops of oil.

YouTube link

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising has the US and China fighting over oil reserves near a Russian island. The OFP: DR trailer below provides a neat history of the island and it's place in military history. It also providers a broader political context (the campaign is part of a broader Russo-Chinese war.

YouTube link

Both provide interesting scenario ideas for wargamers. However, both were technical disasters (the newly released BC2 is amazing!) :-) YouTube link

I can think of lots of scenarios, corporate agents ambushing the escort of competitors tanker truck convoy, or black market thugs ambushing it, raid on a oil, bio fuel refinery to destroy or capture, raid on a storage depot for fuel drums, raid on a solar panel field to capture the facility, from competitors.

Oil is running out, and governments fail to respond timely for renewable fuels, many areas haven't seen fuel in weeks some even months, many of these area or experiencing riots and looting armed gangs and mobs are hijacking fuel trucks and heating oil trucks for winter is coming, this has had a great impact on the global market exchange as market crash, you and your group must survive, you all pitched in and built your own alcohol distilling refinery powered by a solar panel field and a few wind generators now you must protect it!

Reminds me of the RPG game "Twilight 2000" military units still trying to fight the war but have to stop to make their own bio fuels might be a good reference for gaming. link

The real problem isn't just the fuel if oil runs out. A lot of other every day things we use are from oil. Plastics are made out of oil by product, roads asphalt is an oil by product. No more oil will change the very way humans currently live.

Soda and drinks will have to go back in glass bottles, as will other products we buy and use. Well have to go back to using actual rubber in our vehicle tires because the tires are now actually made of plastic.

I wonder if this show will address these facts.

Soda and drinks will have to go back in glass bottles, as will other products we buy and use.

You mean we are running out of aluminum too? Oh the humanity!

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.

Sure, but E85 is not as energy-dense as gasoline. Fuel economy on E85 is about 25% less than on gas. Yes, Virginia, your big chevy truck now gets 6 miles per gallon. Worse yet, corn-based ethanol takes MORE energy to produce than we get out of it by burning it. Cellulosic ethanol takes 3 weeks per batch to ferment, but takes less energy to produce than you get out of it by burning.

Biodiesel is a decent option (actually higher quality than petrodiesel), but is expensive to produce even in commercial quantities, last report was $5.50 USD a gallon at the pump in the US, where petrodiesel is $3 USD a gallon. It also doesn't do very well at low temperatures. Even petrodiesel will gel at low temperatures, but biodiesel gels at about 22*F compared to petrodiesel at ~5*F. Needless to say, this makes biodiesel less than desirable for a jet fuel, or even fuel in most of the developed world in the winter. There are chemicals you can add to retard gelling, but most of them come from petroleum refining!

Strangely I only see cans in a 6 pack and machines, they never sell single cans in the store. But who wants an aluminum Big Gulp can?

I just got finished watching the running out of oil on National Geographic channel. Got some nice ideas, intercepting food shipments on trains and such.

But one thing they said bothered me. Lack of oil will stop all orbital launches from lack of fuel. I stopped and wait a minute here. They don't use oil to put rockets into space, that's hydrogen fuel. How stupid do they think we are?

I'd find them more credible if they didn't bring up the space craft but more about the crawler they use to bring the rockets out to the launch pad. What powers them yeah sure might stop launches.

But not once in that show do they even bring up alternate fuels like hydrogen and methane. What kind of political bull crap are they spewing out here.

You need oil to make the insulated wiring that goes into those spacecrafts, "O" rings, seals, circuit boards, non corrosive coating on aluminum tubing, copper tubing, you need oil to make integrated circuits. transistors and resistors. you need oil for insulation to go around your sensitive components to protect them from heat and cold. you need oil to make LED's, You need oil for so many little thing around you that we take it all for granted. So yes without oil the space program will shut down, and so will many many other things, so many things we have from oil that forms the whole plastic family, and in many situations plastics from oil will only due. Synthetic plastics are ok, but are costly and do not hold up as well as plastics from oil.

Yes, but seeing as they have those components made from oil already made they have a supply for a while. It's not like it will immediately effect those parts, it's like any other vehicle it will still work all you need to do is refuel it. Once the parts need replaced then they'll start having problems. This would be a slow effect not an instant one like they were portraying last night.

Gee…anyone notice that they avoided the "N" word as a power source? NUCLEAR FRAKKING POWER NG JERKWADS!!

Besides producing electricity, using CO2 absorbers, hydrogen generation( which is a fuel source itself), and catalytic processes you could manufacture methane, gasoline, and jet fuel. Of course it would cost around $4 USD a gallon.
Of course the Greenies don't like EVIL NUCLEAR POWER…so no mention of it in their little wet dream.

And lets not think the oil companies won't dust off all those Nazi synthetic oil/fuel formulas…especially the coal based ones.

The other fuel source that the show only glossed over was natural gas resources…that alone could keep the economies of the Arabs and Russians in the energy bussiness. Besides all the electric generation and vehicle fuel sources it could provide(you can even modify aircraft to use NG as fuel source),it can be used to make plastics.

Then there's methane…where's there's crap…there's fuel. Same for landfill garbage dumps. So getting the trash becomes important as fuel source.
Heck, folks would be building power/fuel stations on top of places like Fresh Kills NJ, just to tap that source.
Dumps,sewers, and animal/farm waste becomes an important fuel and plastic source.

As far as space programme oil needs, outside of fuel pump and lubricant needs, and of course all those gaskets, seals, etc…there's nothing to stop the programme( other than the general ecomomic disruption). And once again, alternative sources can be used to meet those needs…heck you can use pig pee to make plastic.

The other thing they got wrong was the choice to use corn for either fuel production OR food. Some processes lets you do both! The mash left over from fuel production can be used as animal feed stocks( and if desperate human food).
It's just not done now because of some rather stupid people in charge today…and that feed is currently cheaper.

The premise of the show was a bit goofy…magically every Greenie's dream came true and all the oil magically vanished!! My first thoughts would be eco-terrorists using either some kind of extremely voracious oil-eating bacteria or some nanotech weapon…or this was conducted by aliens to disrupt human civilisation prior to their invasion.
Hmmm…perhaps that could be a gaming scenario?

DRILL TITAN!!

I agree nuclear is the way to go to help with our energy needs and the waste product can be solved. Getting rid of the waste is the problem most everyone has. If they can spend billions for a magnetic rail gun to smash atoms you can do the same launching sealed canisters of waste in to space toward the sun, it would be vaporized long before it got there and the tiny wienie amount of waste would have no effect on the sun either.

How exactly are you using nuclear power to make those long-chain hydrocarbons (ie, gasoline)? Nuclear power is not a bad thing, but don't claim it can do things that we still haven't figured out how to do in modern chemistry!

Hydrogen is not a useful fuel source. energy density sucks and it has a bad habit of escaping through solid steel.

Methane is almost useful, but still pretty low-density. And you still have the problem with CO2 production.

Few ports will take Liquified Natural Gas tankers, they're particularly flammable. Even regular oil tankers don't have an atmosphere monitoring system onboard, but LNG ships do.

And we're not talking fuels at $4 USD a gallon, (didn't we see that in 2007-08?), we're talking gasoline at $20 USD a gallon when we truly hit Peak Oil.

That's what hydrogen fuel cells are supposed to be for. All you'd need is a hydrogen powered engine to generate enough electricity to push a car. And as with anything time will bring technology up to desirable levels, making hydrogen and methane much better. That's really the direction they should be going as it is right now. The idea of electric cars is a greenie's pipe dream, those fools don't live in areas that's covered with snow 4 months out of the year.

And yeah, I agree. The oil isn't going to disappear in an instant, unless some kind of weapon is made to attack it that way.

Which just reminded me an episode of Full Metal Panic Fumoffu. Sagara had a container of a bio-weapon, and didn't know what it was. The container is opened in class and every one thinks they're going to die. Turns out all it was is a mircos made to attack an enemy's oil based products, harmless to humans. But not friendly to oil by products, any oil by products. Needless to say true to an anime it didn't take long before polyester clothes started to disintegrate. You wore cotton you're safe.

If they can really made such a weapon I'll never wear anything but cotton, wool and leather again.

To Lion In The Stars…I didn't make that idea up and the nuclear power plant just provides the electric power. and air flow via the cooling towers.

Los Alamos scientists are developing the prototype electrolytic cells now!! A commercial grade system will be ready by 2013.
Source: Popular Science July 2008, pg.43

Methane production through the use of waste products uses carbon already in the carbon cycle…thus not adding any new CO2 into the enviroment…unlike the fossil carbon used now( hence the current "problems with carbon")

Japan is a heavy user of LNG and has all the logistical issues already worked out. The U.S. could use our own sources delivered via pipelines, and we do have some LNG loading terminals for off shore sources. Europe can just use pipelines, as they do now( they may have to add capacity) from Russia. Eventually Asia will have to do the same with pipelines.