Oil Can

Has human civilization reached it's peak? There are those that believe that it has. What is it that they base this dire prediction on? It is simple, they base it on the supposed declining oil production and the vast increase in population. Before I go into any of this I want you to know that I don't necessarily agree with this assessment but I am writing this article from their viewpoint so that you can compare the opinions expressed with some of the other articles in my archive on future oil production and energy.

You hear it every day, we are doomed. Oil production is going to decline until it runs out completely. As oil prices rise, oil the very substance that keeps our cars running, our machines purring and heats some of our homes is being priced out of the reach of many common persons. Let's not forget that oil is also a component of other things. Plastics are created using oil. Did you know that oil is used in the production of man made fibers? Those curtains you have hanging around the house may have been made from oil. When you clean your clothes and dishes you use a detergent. The soapy detergents are made from oil. Some chemicals in fertilizer are produced from oil. These fertilizers are important in increasing crop yields. In the old days food would spoil quite quickly. Today when foods are canned, food additives are put into the cans to increase the shelf life of the food. These additives come from oil. Much of our medicine contains petroleum based products. Here is a little know fact, one of the very first uses of oil that dated back thousands of years was in medicine. Oil is used in the manufacturing of garbage bags, film and hard plastic to mention a few uses. Oil is used in building, painting, packaging, and toothpaste. I think that you get the idea by now, a world without oil would be almost a stone age world.

Over the last few years, many articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines that affirm declining oil production. These articles are nothing new. In 1923 Time magazine ran an article about the declining oil production of the California oil fields. The articles today are a little different because they indicate that as oil is depleted there is no replacement that can be found for it. Even this isn't the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that oil dependency is rapidly increasing. Countries like China and India are just now coming into their own and they need oil, lots of oil. Since oil is a finite item there is only so much to go around. For instance as China grows where is it going to get more oil from to sustain this growth? Every new oil discovery will be fought over by the larger nations. In an ideal world, oil would be apportioned out by population but since the U.S. is the world's biggest oil consumer, we would never agree to that. It would mean the reduction or elimination of entire industries and the very idea seems to much like communism.

As scientists examine the world's oil resources, they claim that most of them have already peaked. What this means is that less and less oil will come from these wells in the future until zero production is reached. The problem is that oil is a non renewable energy source. It took millions of years to create and we are going to use it up in just a couple of hundred years. When you think about it, it was kind of crazy putting all our energy dependency needs on such an item. Many experts are now saying that all the other forms of energy available to us will only supply a fraction of the energy that oil now supplies and of course the objects that are produced by oil will disappear.

Can you imagine what was once a cheap plastic toy could become a very expensive one? As the price of oil goes higher and higher, the price of the toy rises.

We have to add in a relatively new factor into the mix now, and that is terrorism and policy issues. Since oil is getting so scarce, the disruption of pipelines and the such, can effect the world oil prices by lowering the daily output. Will it get to the point where pipe line disruptions will be carried out by people making believe that they are terrorists so the oil prices can rise? Another problem is relations between nations. One nation may not want to sell oil to another, leaving that second nation in a precarious position. Oil is needed for industry to grow.

Matters could even be worse. One of the reasons that Japan went to war in World War II was because of a lack of resources. Could this happen over oil? Think of two very powerful countries both needing oil and only one resource is available. As I said, wars have started over resources before so why couldn't they now? There are stories out there that state that the U.S. is preparing for just this type of war in case it happens.