Oil Discoveries Lowest In 70 Years!

[Economy 52,844]

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Discoveries-At-Lowest-Point-Since-The-1940s.html

 

2017 saw the weakest new oil discoveries since the 1940s as the oil crash saw oil companies trim exploration budgets to the bone. 2016 was also a very weak year tho not as bad as 2017

 

Only 7 Billion barrels of oil were discovered this year, barely 12% of what has been consumed

 

Ironically tho, despite weak oil discoveries last severeal years, Proven Oil Reserves Globally are at all time highs as new technology now gives us access to oil that in the past wasnt counted as reserves as it was considered unaccessible

[Economy 52,844]

@Woolfsmck @Luc

^^^^^^^ u two usually have opinions on oil  

[Jed 7,716]

I love the idea of cher being an economics professor

[ALGAYDO 35,083]

Oops. Looks like the world needs to update their **** and get with the environmentally-conscious program. 

Or maybe idk what this really means 

[Sailor 3,321]

Queen of oil

[Florian 20,017]

1 hour ago, ALGAYDO said:

Oops. Looks like the world needs to update their **** and get with the environmentally-conscious program. 

Or maybe idk what this really means 

That's easy to say but mostly impossible to apply in a short period of time unfortunatelly.

I don't see any alternative to oil atm unfornutally (except nuclear power), especially for transportation

[ALGAYDO 35,083]

9 minutes ago, Florian said:

That's easy to say but mostly impossible to apply in a short period of time unfortunatelly.

I don't see any alternative to oil atm unfornutally (except nuclear power), especially for transportation

I’m a bit ignorant when it comes to these matters, so I can’t really speak much about it, but why doesn’t the government just pass regulations that push for such improvements for the future? Is it that it’s too expensive or something? Because I feel like we should focus on the long-term benefits more than the short-term 

[Florian 20,017]

49 minutes ago, ALGAYDO said:

I’m a bit ignorant when it comes to these matters, so I can’t really speak much about it, but why doesn’t the government just pass regulations that push for such improvements for the future? Is it that it’s too expensive or something? Because I feel like we should focus on the long-term benefits more than the short-term 

Because we're currently in a race against time.

Nature and ecology weren't taken seriously until not very long ago but we're at a point where powerful people realize that we're heading to a disaster if nothing change. And that disaster is not far away, 2050-2060, the biggest issue being CO2 emissions.

So for now they're trying to find a short-term solution to the CO2 issue before it's too late. The only way to reduce them is renewable energy but that's where we're facing technical issues.

As long as you fuel a charcoal or oil factory, you'll have a stable amount of energy out of it, with renewable energy that amount is never stable and depends on many factors  :
    - solar panel won't produce the same amount over the day, season, part of the world  
    - Windmills production depends on ... wind  
    - ...
The only way to create CO2-free energy with a stable production is nuclear power. And not everyone is willing to open powerplant (and it wouldn't be the best mid-term/long-term solution anyway eventho I'm praying for new discoveries related to nuclear fusion that would be 95% clean and safe energy).

Then for transportation I don't see how we can cut oil as we don't have strong enough technology related to electricity. Electric cars can't travel long enough, recycling batteries is something we can't do and if everyone was using electric cars we would need more electric power and we just saw above that it's hard to do without oil/nuclear.

[ALGAYDO 35,083]

18 minutes ago, Florian said:

Because we're currently in a race against time.

Nature and ecology weren't taken seriously until not very long ago but we're at a point where powerful people realize that we're heading to a disaster if nothing change. And that disaster is not far away, 2050-2060, the biggest issue being CO2 emissions.

So for now they're trying to find a short-term solution to the CO2 issue before it's too late. The only way to reduce them is renewable energy but that's where we're facing technical issues.

As long as you fuel a charcoal or oil factory, you'll have a stable amount of energy out of it, with renewable energy that amount is never stable and depends on many factors  :
    - solar panel won't produce the same amount over the day, season, part of the world  
    - Windmills production depends on ... wind  
    - ...
The only way to create CO2-free energy with a stable production is nuclear power. And not everyone is willing to open powerplant (and it wouldn't be the best mid-term/long-term solution anyway eventho I'm praying for new discoveries related to nuclear fusion that would be 95% clean and safe energy).

Then for transportation I don't see how we can cut oil as we don't have strong enough technology related to electricity. Electric cars can't travel long enough, recycling batteries is something we can't do and if everyone was using electric cars we would need more electric power and we just saw above that it's hard to do without oil/nuclear.

I seriously didn’t know that so much thought was involved in a re-newable energy over-haul  

thanks for shedding light on this matter! 

[JudasIsAHolyFoo 3,278]

That would probably explain why gas is always 1.20 

[Economy 52,844]

2 hours ago, ALGAYDO said:

I’m a bit ignorant when it comes to these matters, so I can’t really speak much about it, but why doesn’t the government just pass regulations that push for such improvements for the future? Is it that it’s too expensive or something? Because I feel like we should focus on the long-term benefits more than the short-term 

Governments are putting in policies to reduce emissions

 

In most of the Developed world a lot of Coal plants (Coal pollutes even more than Crude Oil) have been getting shut down in favor of renewables or at the very least Natural Gas plants (The least toxic of the main fossil fuels)

 

Also many countries now have rebates for electric vehicles, a carbon tax to make fossil fuels more expensive etc

 

But at the end of the day fossil fuels are reliable and easy to use. Clean energy is iffy, expensive or unreliable dependig on which one were talking about

 

The economic cost of chaging too quickly can be significant

 

People have to remember that renewables and green policies are being implemented because of the environment in mind not because they are more practicle in most cases. It makes a fast transition expensive and difficult

 

I think thats what @Florian was getting at?

 

Here in my Province weve relied mostly on Nuclear, Natural Gas and Hydro-Electricity to stay clean

 

We are running out of places to build dams on tho and Nuclear already makes 51% of our power so adding anymore nuclear would make us too reliant on a single source

 

So our Government has been adding tones of Solar and Wind but our winter day light is so short and much of our Province is not always windy so all this money doesnt even produce reliable electricity

 

Our electricity as a result is now one of the most expensive in North America and factories dont like opening up shop here now  

[Economy 52,844]

2 hours ago, Florian said:

That's easy to say but mostly impossible to apply in a short period of time unfortunatelly.

I don't see any alternative to oil atm unfornutally (except nuclear power), especially for transportation

I mean... electric cars are starting to become pretty dam reliable... if they can increase milage per charge just a little more and cities can build more charging stations, we can certainly rely on them more

 

I think within 10-15 years electric cars could easily make up 30% to 40% of new car sales... In some Countries more

 

We will still need oil for heavier forms of transportation however not to mention oil products like asphalt, paints, plastics, fertilizers etc

 

Thats why ppl in my Country that dont want to develop oil sands or pipelines and use argument that its not an industry with a future anyway I think are dead wrong

 

Canadas oil reserves are massive. 3rd largest in the world and Canada coud go #1 once some recent discoveries are officially certified

 

Thing is, global oil demand isnt expected to peak until 2025 at the very earliest or until 2040 at the latest. Most likely it will be in between both scenarios and be somewhere in the 2030s

 

By the time we peak in 2030s and are consuming over 100M barrels a day I think world production will be in decline anyway so Countries like mine could still sell large amounts even with falling demand as many Countries production will be in decline by then anyway

[Helxig 45,336]

Oh boy I can't wait until they just f.ucking hollow out the earth beneath us and pollute the entire ocean with their new oil reserve accessing technology

[Economy 52,844]

1 hour ago, Helxig said:

Oh boy I can't wait until they just f.ucking hollow out the earth beneath us and pollute the entire ocean with their new oil reserve accessing technology

Its crazy. New technologies they developing here in Canada for oil sands could increase Proven Reserves from the current 172 Billion Barrels to over 315 Billion in the next few years if the tech works as expected.

 

That would nearly double the reserves and wed rise from #3 in the world to #1 😱

 

Thats still a small fraction of the estimated 2 Trillion barrels in place. The majority still isnt recoverable with todays technology so it doesnt count as reserves

 

There is a silverlining tho, this new tech that will increase Oil Sands reserves at least is suppostu reduce pollution on the production itself as it will use more steam and solvents with a combination of microwave heating technology reducing the need to burn Natural Gas to super heat water to seperate oil from sand  

 

USA same thing, reserves in shale have room to grow a lot although i think most technological advancements are complete but sometime in the future more fracting tech revolutions could come

 

Conventional liquid oil on the otherhand already has high recovery rates... So outside North America Proven reserves of already known fields in different countries are unlikely to grow by any significant amount!

[Helxig 45,336]

2 hours ago, Economy said:

 

There is a silverlining tho, this new tech that will increase Oil Sands reserves at least is suppostu reduce pollution on the production itself as it will use more steam and solvents with a combination of microwave heating technology reducing the need to burn Natural Gas to super heat water to seperate oil from sand  

 

I guess that's something