Something more on the various estimates of our remaining global oil reserves
(This blogpost can very well be read to the sound of The Smiths's song "Girlfriend In A Coma")
It fits so extremely well with the ecomodernist, techno-optimist, techno-utopian, cornucopian, techno-grandiose hubris and vulnerability-denial of our political and scientific leaders, and also of IEA (International Energy Agency, the leading global energy information institute of our world), to vastly exaggerate our oil reserves (having always done so), that independent oil researcher John Peach of the video chat group led by Canadian-Ukrainian hippie Andrii Zvorygin (and which contains heavy names like associate professor Simon Michaux, one of the most learned peakoilers out there) could very well be right in this recent YouTube video, where he estimates our remaining global conventional oil reserves (I think he must have counted "proven reserves", 1P, and only conventionals) at 563 billion barrels. This gives us about 23,5 years of conventional crude oil (minus condensate) use of 24 billion barrels every year, which takes us to the middle of the year 2047, exactly when veteran professor and very learned oil expert and EROEI pioneer Charles A.S.Hall, estimated it at, in this YouTube video from the end of 2022. I made an own calculation on this blog, here, and landed at 2048, almost exactly at the same year.
Everything points in the same direction, it seems to me.
The veteran French oil geologist Jean Laherrére (b. 1931) has done much work on the oil reserves. His data completely confirms the data of John Peach. Just study this graph from this blogpost on the blog Peak Oil Barrel 2015:
From this graph we see that in 2010, there was about 870 Gb of conventional oil reserves left. If we follow these data, we can calculate what the remaining conventional reserves would be today. 14 years has gone since 2010. We use about 24 Gb of conventional oil every year as of recent. We used a little less in the years before 2018. I put an average of 22 Gb yearly use since 2010, up until today. 14 x 22 is 308. Then 870 - 308 is 562. Almost exactly the same conclusions as John Peach arrived at, which was 563 Gb.
In a 2022 paper, Laherrére wrote: “Thus, we suggest that the global reserves of ‘realistically-accessible’ oil (essentially, conventional oil including ‘light-tight’ oil) are probably only about 750 Gb or so, once the extra heavy oils and adjustments for probable overstatements of Middle East and FSU reserves have been subtracted. Moreover, this measure of oil reserves has been on a declining trend for over 35 years, and would last only about 25 years at current rates of production.” (Quoted in this comment to a blogpost on the blog Peak Oil Barrel in 2023)
Now I know at least six educated oil reserve experts that has arrived to the same conclusions: John Peach, professor Charles A.S.Hall, Jean Laherrére, Ron Patterson, James Dietrich (see this blogpost of mine) and professor Michael Jefferson.
Will the reserves last longer if we also count the unconventionals? No, because for every 24 Gb of conventional oil consumed every year, there is 12 Gb of unconventionals consumed. And the economically recoverable unconventional reserves is probably not very much more than 50% less than the conventionals (12 is 50 % of 24). Why? Well, because these reserves get every year more expensive to produce, and exponentially so, so only a part of our vast unconventional reserves will ever be produced, because this production is often propped up by massive debt, and has a very low EROEI, and exponentially so into the future. It does not matter if we have 1000 Gb of unconventional reserves, if this is so.
So how many additional Gb:s of unconventionals do we have?
Oil expert and Peak Oil blogger Dennis Coyne, who has done very detailed research, also on the oil reserves, wrote in 2023 in this comment to a blogpost on the blog Peak Oil Barrel: "Unconventional URR (Ultimate recoverable resources) might be as much as 600 Gb, the 954 Gb unconventional URR implied by the Laherrere analysis seems unlikely to me."
We might have produced half of that already, so we have to subtract 300 Gb from those 600 Gb. It gives us 300 Gb of remaining unconventional oil reserves. If we add condensates, it's 14 % more, i.e. 42 Gb more. We might have 342 Gb of remaining production of unconventional oil reserves.
If Laherrére is correct, then half of 954 Gb is 477 Gb, and with condensates added, it becomes 543 Gb of remaining unconventional reserves.
Because of the future collapse of our civilization, we will probably never be able to take all that up. It's a massive amount. Both Laherrére's and Coynes numbers.
As the conventional oil industry collapses in the future, so will the unconventional oil industry collapse with it, and we will never be in a position when we have used up our conventional oil reserves, but live on our unconventional oil reserves. So expensive the latter will get. This is a very, very important fact. It is also very important to remember that as the unconventionals get more expensive, the conventional oil also get more and more expensive to produce, which makes the unconventionals even more expensive, in a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop.
All in all, we have mostly almost as much unconventional oil reserves as we have conventional oil reserves left.
Also very important to understand, is that we will never be able to extract the last drops in our oil reserves, the total collapse of civilization will come way before that, at least 5 years before, taking us to 2042. And the end of global net oil exports will happen way before that, at least 5 years before, taking us to 2037 *, which also will collapse the global economy totally, because there is about 162 oil importing countries that becomes without oil. It's also true that the oil importing countries will collapse totally way before the last drops of oil imports are consumed, at least a couple of years before, taking us to 2035. And their collapse will begins slowly even before that, at least a couple of years before, taking us to 2033. So my estimate that I will die by starvation in 2036 doesn't seem farfetched to me, still.
Remember, in all these estimates, I have been conservative.
* I have in this book calculated the end of global net oil exports to be in 2027, but I think 2037 may be the absolute upper limit for this.
