World will remain well-oiled for generations

The world will remain ‘well oiled’ for decades to come, according to new research published by a university student looking at future levels of black gold.

Production levels of oil increase every year - in 2015, an estimated 97 million barrels were pumped out of the Earth every day. It is a finite resource and it’s commonly predicted that the world will enter an oil crisis in the next 20 to 30 years.

This would result in a decline in production so rapid some fear the world would not have enough time to develop new sources of energy, leading to drastic social and economic impacts.

However, Denis Levchenko, a Russian undergraduate student has made a very different prediction – and it may surprise many experts. Denis, who is in his third year of the Physics (with Theoretical Physics) BSc course at The University of Manchester in the UK, has developed a new method of predicting future levels of oil supply. His technique seems to indicate that we have enough oil supplies to last until 2070 at the very least.

His method uses Hubbert curves, which were developed by American geophysicist M King Hubbert in 1956 and became the standard technique to predict the future depletion of oil. However, Denis tried something that had never been done before - he included new types of oil, and used the curves to match predicted demand, as opposed to supply.

The results appear to show that while production of conventional oil may slowly start to go down over the next decade, ‘unconventional’ forms - tight oil and sand oil, which are mined rather than drilled - may last until the 2040s, and shale oil until the 2070s. If more reserves of these are discovered, then oil supplies could even last beyond 2100.

Bahrain was the first place on the Arabian side of the Gulf where oil was discovered, and it coincided with the collapse of the world pearl market. The well is situated in Sakhir and oil first spurted from it in 1931.

“When I started, I originally wanted to discuss whether an oil crisis is inevitable and to survey other potential sources of energy,” said Denis, 20, from Moscow, who hopes to study for a master’s degree after graduation and ultimately work as an academic.

“This was really just a small half-semester project, and I didn’t think the work was anything special while I was doing it. I was stunned to discover that the critical moment may not arrive until 2070 at the very earliest, which would give the world much more time to develop the alternatives.”

Despite its enormous reserves, unconventional oil was ignored by experts until recently as it’s much more expensive to obtain, and therefore hadn’t been widely developed. However, it now accounts for six per cent of worldwide total oil production. This is set to rise as depletion of conventional oil will lead to price increases, making development of the new types of oil more economically viable. It will also make green energy more affordable and Bahrain is currently looking at developing solar energy options.