Saudi Reserves, Peak Oil Consumption, And Other Thoughts

[HiTempguy1]

So a lot of hubbub going on about Saudi proven oil reserves of something like 268 billion barrels. Seems like a lot, right? The media sure seems to be making it out to be so, and how Saudi is going to be left with oil they can't sell 20 years from now.

But none of this makes sense to me. Some numbers:

Current worldwide daily oil use: 100mil bbl
Expected peak daily oil use: 112mil bbl year 2044 (average expected gdp growth worldwide, vs the low end case of 2036 peak at 108 and the high end case of cruising by 115 by 2050 in high gdp growth)

Lets expand this out to say that by 2060, we can expect oil to have peaked in 2044 and now be dropping, probably to 100mil bbl or less. To make the math simple, I'm saying we will average 106mil bbl/day from now until 2060.

Marth time:

106mil bbl/day x 365day/year x 41 years = 1,586,290,000,000

1.6 trillion barrels of oil. Now if Saudi is the cheapest producer of oil globally (claims of $4/bbl right now), then it stands to reason that they will sell all of their oil before anyone else does.

What possible logical reason is there to say Saudi oil will be left in the ground? Even if solar power and wind (HA!) becomes viable along with the storage requirements, it takes time to build that infrastructure. Tesla's battery arrays like they have in Australia are not even remotely close to what is really needed for a truly stable system, we're talking a minimum of a decade after the technology is figured out for investment to start putting a dent in oil assuming we find other ways to produce electricity.

So what am I missing? Or is this just typical media sensationalism?

[nzwasp]

So if by say 2030, 30 to 50% of all cars went to electric only how much consumption would that take off the market. Or is petroleum/gasoline not the number one use for oil? and is that 268 Billion proven reserves current for now or when they first started producing decades ago.

[pheoxs]

The bigger question will be how quickly can we shift away from Cobalt for battery manufacturing. Right now over 60% of the worlds Cobalt supply comes from Congo. Supposedly Panasonic (and thus Tesla) are working on Cobalt free batteries but battery tech seems to move at a snails pace.

Congo has 3.5 million tonnes of Cobalt (est 2017) and is currently supplying 115k tonnes per year (est 2016) and expected to grow around 10% per year for the next few years.

[nzwasp]

So by 2050 batteries are going to be costing a shit load as that would be around the time Congo runs out. Can cobalt be recycled?

[sneek]

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The bigger question will be how quickly can we shift away from Cobalt for battery manufacturing. Right now over 60% of the worlds Cobalt supply comes from Congo. Supposedly Panasonic (and thus Tesla) are working on Cobalt free batteries but battery tech seems to move at a snails pace.

Congo has 3.5 million tonnes of Cobalt (est 2017) and is currently supplying 115k tonnes per year (est 2016) and expected to grow around 10% per year for the next few years.

AFAIK there is a lot of Cobalt available in Australia if people are willing to pay. I just recall cobalt is cheapest to harvest from the congo due to "low labour costs" and very flexible government regulations.

[ZenOps]

I totally blame the USA for not taking more weekend trips to the moon to play golf. And the retiring of the Concorde, taking two tons of fuel to taxi on the runway.

USA needs more fireball spewing guitars, and then place the debtload on millennials who don't know how to change lightbulbs or open tins of tuna.

[tonytiger55]

There is a town called Cobalt here in Canada. There is a lot of that mineral in the ground there.

I think oil demand will go up if we are going to go electric. All all those batteries and the sub materials will need to be mined, processed and transported. Then you have the infrastructure that has to be put in place. Of course you have to pay people to do this and with the money people will buy more shit (iphones etc) which will require the consumption of more oil to mine, manufacture and transport those goods etc.

If we go by anything we were told in the 80/90's. We should have run out of oil by now.

On that projection(Hitemp), yes Saudi could run out of oil. But there is a lot of oil left in the world. A LOT. Our means to access it has improved.
I don't think Saudi will run out in that time frame, maybe a bit later. Its more because other sources may be tapped and people buy from other parts of the world instead.

[ExtraSlow]

Just to clarify, the word "reserves" in this context doesn't meal all the oil in the ground. It means all the oil economically recoverable from already discovered reservoirs.

As time goes on, new reserves are usually found, or become economical through improved technology or higher prices.

[JRSC00LUDE]

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AFAIK there is a lot of Cobalt available in Australia if people are willing to pay. I just recall cobalt is cheapest to harvest from the congo due to "low labour costs" and very flexible government regulations.

Aka worse environmental and societal abuse than anything we could fathom here in the dirty oil dump of Western Canada.