Peak Oil Research Paper

IDC 401-12 Research Paper Peak Oil

By: Paul Althoff

Can you live without oil? Oil touches nearly every single aspect of life of the people living in the industrialized world. Most of our food, clothing, electronics, hygiene products and transportation would not exist without this resource. Energy is the blood of economies around the world, oil being the major producer of energy. Oil is created through an environmental process that takes thousands of years. Oil is created by layer upon layer of sediment accumulation and pressure which creates thin oil shale. Once formed into shale, oil is easily extractable and able to be converted to usable energy. Crude Oil is the most important commodity in the world. Since the inception of oil, economies around the world have flourished and countries are able to produce more and do things which were previously impossible. Oil however, is a finite resource because it takes millions of years to be created naturally.

The planet will eventually run out of oil. Peak Oil, is a concept that is in huge debate; yet no one is paying attention to the consequences that this concept may dump on the world. Peak Oil is the concept that oil is a nonrenewable resource and there has to be a point in the future where the rate of extraction or production will peak then decline. Throughout the last century we have been on oil “high”. The world produced unimaginable outputs of oil, not compassionate to the fact that the supply will eventually run out. We are past the point of peak oil because of our consumption rate, population growth, and oil is a finite resource. In dealing with Peak Oil we must slow our consumption and move to the use and invention of alternate fuel sources.

On August 27th 1859 the oil industry was born into the United States. In Titusville, Pennsylvania Colonel Edwin L. Drake drilled the first oil well striking oil 70 feet deep. The land however belonged to Rock Oil Company. Overnight the oil industry was disorganized with many other oil sites being found, creating a huge supply making it difficult for the oil companies to turn a profit. John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company emerged in the 1870’s. From 1870 to present day the petroleum industry became extremely profitable. Oil was first discovered in the Middle East by the British and in comparison to Rockefeller in the United States, business took off uncontrollably. Another major step in the history of oil was in 1951 when Saudi Arabia put the Ghawar oil field into production. The field measured 20 miles wide and 175 miles long. The Ghawar field is still is the largest oil field ever found. (Oil Timeline)

In 1970 the United States produced 9.6 million barrels of oil a day and today we produced about 4.6 US. Because of mass oil consumption from various activities it is impossible for world oil production to meet world oil demand. In the capitalistic