After the second world war, the Middle East was said to have perhaps 16 million barrels in oil reserves (deposits), by 1967 the estimate had risen to 250 billion barrels, in the 1990s it reached 500 billion, and now it's at over 900 billion barrels or close to a trillion.
In approximate figures, official estimates of world oil reserves seem to range from about 1 trillion barrels to 2.3 trillion barrels (correct me if I am wrong). That's just to say we don't truly know how much oil there is on the planet, in advance of more exploration (sounds poetic). The big difference here is between proven reserves and potential or possible reserves (see Dept of Energy estimates, US Geological Survey estimates and various other "expert estimates"). I cannot assess how accurate these figures really are, but let's suppose for the sake of argument that world oil consumption is about 28.3 billion barrels per year. Then this suggests oil reserves would be sufficient for anywhere between 35-80 years if consumption remained at a constant level, and if no new reserves are proven or estimated. Now of course in reality there is no constant level, and the average growth in annual world consumption (taking the last decade) is around 1.3% - it might well rise to an average of 2%. You'd have to factor that in. In that case, you'd think that oil reserves would be depleted by consumption within anywhere between about 15 to 40 years or so, if no new reserves are discovered. Apart from not distinguishing precisely between output, extracted stocks held, various oil uses, oil sales and final oil consumption, this simplistic approximate calculation does not of course consider prices, or price fluctuations. If oil prices rise, consumption falls, and if prices fall, consumption tends to rise. Oil prices are likely to rise in the future; but technological change which would substitute other energy sources could change the picture completely. Rising oil prices would certainly cause a diversification into other fuel sources. That leads me to think the debate really is about the oil running out, but about who should have it, at what price, that's the salient point really. Whatever the case, it's a good bet that masses of people in poor countries will never have the opportunity to drive petrol-fueled motorcars. By the time they have the money to buy them, insufficient oil remains to fuel those cars with petrol at an affordable price. As regards OPEC, while the total world output of oil in physical terms is estimated to have trebled since 1974, in those thirty years OPEC's share of the world oil market declined from half in 1974 to about 38% at the present, and continues to decline. At the same time, while oil supplied one half of the world's total primary energy demand in 1974, today it is below 40 percent. That is just to say, that oil supply is becoming relatively less important in aggregate as an energy source, even although world oil output has increased gigantically in physical terms, and that, in addition, the actual share of OPEC countries in that oil supply is substantially reduced. This just reduces OPEC's very ability to be a "price setter", quite apart from political factors and larger strategic oil stocks. Take for example gas. The share of natural gas in the world's total primary energy use is said to have risen from less than a fifth to nearly a quarter since 1974, and continues to rise. US domestic natural gas production for example is expected to increase by over a third in the next twenty years, when natural gas would generate nearly a third of all US electric power, versus less than a sixth today (but mainly US gas is substituting for US coal, not petrol; it's cars that burn up most of the oil products). The United States still has very large reserves of (both known and undiscovered) natural gas and oil deposits in the ground, but really conditions in the world energy market determine whether those resources are explored and developed. Petroleum exploration in the US itself just happens to cost more than in places like Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East, and in these places deposit finds are larger than in the US, while fewer bores need to be drilled to identify and extract the deposits. Oil companies just focus on exploiting reserves in regions where energy can be produced most profitably, at a given price structure. Although this may mean increased dependence on imported fuels, their own relative production costs are lowered against cartellised prices for oil, making possible surplus-profits of various kinds. The US itself supposed to produce about a tenth of world oil output, but consumes nearly a quarter of that output, thus, the US imports over half of oil consumed there. Those imports could be reduced by greater local oil exploitation or alternative energy sources, but if this isn't happening, it's mainly just a matter of relative prices and costs in a capitalist market. That is just to say, that I think energy policy is nowadays not determined primarily by technicalities of extraction, scarcity and location factors, but just by the actual price and market structure of various energy types, and relative profitability considerations, as related to an actual consumption pattern. These define whether extraction, scarcity and location factors make an oil supply "economic". To use a non-renewable resource is not necessarily irrational, the irrationality if anything must be in the way that the resource is distributed by a specific system of prices. "Oil imperialism" then seems to be essentially about influencing oil rents, and about securing guaranteed supplies, because of the ability of oil price fluctuations to strongly influence (1) the cost structure of industrial production as a vital input, and (2) relative strengths of currencies, thus affecting economic growth (hence the trend to form "strategic oil stocks" to buffer price fluctuations or supply bottlenecks, something which is currently a high priority in China). This gives rise to a new branch of speculation in future oil prices. If estimates of total real world oil deposits vary by as much as 50% in size, and if oil exploitation is highly sensitive to price levels, then all we can really say is that we don't truly know how much oil there is, when exactly it would "run out", and what it would cost to extract deposits hitherto considered uneconomic. In that case, as Jim Devine said, the problem of pollution created by burning more and more petrochemicals is a probably much more important and immediate problem to be concerned about, i.e. air quality. Just how one would arrive at an adequate Marxian analysis of price formation in petrochemical production is not a problem I've had time to work on, sorry to say. All I can say about it is, that I'm a bit skeptical of the analyses I have read about it in the past (though the theory of absolute and differential mining rents was never my strongest point). After I wrote these notes the other day, I read in the Dutch press of the 8th about some irregularities having been discovered in the reporting of Shell's own oil stocks in previous years... funny coincidence. Jurriaan
