Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the early nineteenth century onwards in many cities, and used for local
lighting and heating. But as a major component of the energy mix, natural
gas only got going in the US from the 1920s, and in the rest of the world
from the 1960s.
Will gas overtake oil?
Some people - most notably the physicist and systems analyst Cesare
Marchetti - have perceived a default cycle in energy systems in which
new fuels overtake old ones. Marchetti developed his Energy Substitution
Model, applying statistical and behavioural analysis to the economics of
energy use. He found that energy sources follow a similar trend when
entering the market: that it takes forty to fifty years for an energy source
to go from one percent to ten percent of market share; and that an energy
source which eventually comes to occupy half of the market will take
almost a century to do so, from the time it reaches one percent.
Top six gas producers in 2008 (in billions of cubic metres)
Russia
601.7
United States
582.2
Canada
175.2
Iran
116.3
Norway
99.2
Saudi Arabia
78.1
World production
3,065.6
Source:
BP Statistical Review
According to this theory, just as coal replaced wood as the predominant
fuel, and oil replaced coal, so natural gas would eventually overtake and
replace oil. Marchetti's forecasts for gas have not proved accurate. In the
world's energy mix, oil remains the dominant primary fuel. However, his
overall forecasts for oil are not far off: oil is likely to follow a downward
trend not far from that illustrated by his model.
Before there was any organized use or market for gas, drillers used to
curse their luck if they found gas instead of oil, or more gas than oil. More
likely than not, they would have to flare it off at no benefit to themselves
and a cost to the environment. A joke from these earlier days had a geologist
reporting back on the drilling of an exploratory well: “The bad news is that
we didn't find oil. The good news is that we didn't find gas either.”
