Natural Gas in Arctic lasts only 7 years!
Posted by davidkramer on 2009-May-30
Repeatedly I have been reporting on the topic of peak oil, and naturally the topic “peak”-whatever. Often when discussing the topic with folks who are not familiar with the numbers, data and facts you hear the argument that there are huge reserves in the arctic an antarctic which will solve the problem of dwindling resources.
So far the actual reserves have been guess work. A new report suggests that at least the natural gas resources would not last the planet longer than a meager seven years! [1] In fact it does not look much better for oil reserves either. It is not just about time to start tackling the problem, it is almost too lat. As someone pointed out correctly the other day: “What happens if we run so low on oil that we have not enough energy to accomplish the switch from fossil fuels to an alternative?”. Valid point that seems to escape the managers of our industry, our politicians, our media (how much must journalists suck to miss that topic?) and the people in general who hope that the managers, the politicians and the media got things under control. Bizarre…
The report also states that there are 13% of the remaining oil reserves and 30% of the remaining oil. That means if the gas there lasts seven years we all can imagine that the total amount of natural gas the world has at its disposal is no more than 20-some years. By the way, not much better for the oil since calculations show that we may have no more than 20 years with the expected increases in demand from asia.
The future is bright. But it sure is not lit with fossil fuels!
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1) http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,627643,00.html (German)
