World Energy Reserves (Fossil Fuels)


Oil Reserves





A crude prediction when oil will run out based on the simple assumption of current production rates, including known and projected reserves in world. See below for a more sophisticated prediction.

Coal Reserves



A crude prediction when coal will run out based on the simple assumption of current production rates, including known and projected reserves in world.


Gas Reserves

 


A crude prediction when natural gas will run out based on the simple assumption of current production rates, including known and projected reserves in world.


Hubbert's Curve

In 1953 King Hubbert made a mathematical prediction of when oil production in the U.S. would peak. His model predicted production would peak in 1970 which was only wrong by one year.  The model assumes production will increase until some maximum value and then decrease as consumption uses up the reserve forming a bell shaped curve. This kind of modeling can be done with any resource which has a fixed reserve (no new sources are found).

Here is a sample calculation using 2001 data from the Department of Energy. The first step is finding which is the sum of the oil already consumed and oil in reserves.

Q = 873 billion barrels + 1032 billion barrels = 1905 billion barrels.

Using the equation , the equation can be manipulated into:

where z is the value where the curve peaks, finding it gives us the year that oil production will peak.

z =

According to this calculation, the peak in worldwide oil production will occur around 2009.




Billions of Barrels






Year


The curve shows a peak in 2009 followed by a decline in production dropping to zero near the year 2090.

Sources:


Discussion and Conclusions

In this part we have collected  information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (international energy outlook) regarding energy sources and energy use in the world. We set out to answer the following questions:
  • What are the projected remaining supplies of the major sources of energy now in use?
  • Where are those resources located?
  • Can we estimate when these resources will be exhausted?
    • From the above data and our reading we make the following conclusions as tentative answers to the questions at the top of this page:
  • Significant supplies of fossil fuels are found in only a handful of countries around the globe.
  • The largest reserves of Petroleum are found mainly in the middle east, the largest reserves of coal are found mainly in the U.S.
  • Reserves of oil and natural gas are likely to be in very short supply within 100 to 200 years based on a crude assumption of current rates of production.
  • Significant reserves of coal are likely to last somewhat longer however, the quality of these resources may require significant sacrificing of air quality because of the high sulfur content of remaining reserves.
  • A more sophisticated prediction of when oil production will peak can be made using Hubbert's model. This prediction shows world oil production peaking around 2009 and tapering off to zero in the next 85 years.

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