The notion that the world is running out of oil has been a long-standing claim used to promote the green agenda. However, estimates of recoverable oil on Earth have been revised upward repeatedly over the past seven decades.
Historically, the U.S. was once warned that it had only a few years of oil remaining. In 1874, the state geologist of Pennsylvania predicted that the nation's oil reserves would be depleted within four years. Decades later, the federal government estimated that the U.S. had only a ten-year supply remaining. In 1940, the reserves would be depleted within a decade and a half.
In recent decades, the claim that oil will run out has been used to promote the green energy transition, framing the use of solar and wind power as necessary to preserve human life. However, this narrative is often linked to the peak oil theory, which suggests that global oil production rises to a maximum point and then declines irreversibly as a finite resource is depleted.
The peak oil theory has been used to justify the need to transition to green energy. However, a closer examination of the data reveals that the people and institutions promoting the 'peak oil' narrative are the same ones advancing the climate crisis narrative. If they truly believed the world was running out of oil, they wouldn't need to warn anyone or demand a halt to oil production.
Recent assessments have shown that the amount of recoverable oil on Earth is much higher than previously thought. A study found that global oil production would not peak and decline as previously predicted, but rather continue to rise with advancements in technology.
The concept of 'reserve growth,' which refers to the tendency for estimates of recoverable oil in already discovered fields to increase over time as technology improves, has been particularly significant in this regard. Fields once considered depleted or unreachable are now being reassessed with significantly larger recoverable volumes.
Estimated ultimately recoverable resources (URR), the total volume of oil believed to exist and eventually be producible, have grown consistently since the concept was first quantified. Recent peer-reviewed estimates place global URR at 2.5 trillion barrels for conventional oil alone, rising to 5 trillion barrels when unconventional sources are included.
Additional resources beyond what these URR estimates capture continue to expand the world's usable oil supply. Enhanced oil recovery techniques, carbon dioxide injection into existing reservoirs, and other methods could add billions of barrels to U.S. reserves. The U.S. Geological Survey also estimates vast oil deposits in the oil shale formations of the Green River Formation.
The notion that the world is running out of oil is a myth that has been perpetuated for decades. As technology continues to advance and new resources are discovered, it's clear that the world's usable oil supply is far greater than previously thought.
