Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 1:
The pyramid of oil and gas resource volume versus resource quality. This graphic illustrates the
relationship of
in situ
resource volumes to the distribution of conventional and unconventional accumulations,
and the generally declining net energy and increasing difficulty of extraction as volumes increase lower in the
pyramid. Source: J. David Hughes,
Drill, Baby, Drill: Can Unconventional Fuels Usher in a New Era of En-
ergy Abundance?
, Post Carbon Institute, 2013.
It's helpful to visualize this best-first principle by way of a diagram of what geologists call the
resource pyramid
. Extractive industries typically start at the top of the pyramid and work their way
down. This was the case at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when coal miners exploited
only the very best coal seams, and it's also true today as drillers in the Bakken oil play in North
Dakota concentrate their efforts in core areas within that play where per-well production rates are
highest.
We'll never run out of any fossil fuel, in the sense of extracting every last molecule of coal, oil,
or gas. Long before we get to that point, we will confront the dreaded double line in the diagram,
labeled “energy in equals energy out.” At that stage, it will cost as much energy to find, pump, trans-
port, and process a barrel of oil as the oil's refined products will yield when burned in even the most
perfectly efficient engine (I use oil merely as the most apt example; the same principle applies for
coal, natural gas, or any other fossil fuel). As we approach the energy break-even point, we can ex-
pect the requirement for ever-higher levels of investment in exploration and production on the part
of the petroleum industry; we can therefore anticipate higher prices for finished fuels. Incidentally,
we can also expect more environmental risk and damage from the process of fuel “production” (i.e.,
extraction and processing), because we will be drilling deeper and going to the ends of the Earth to
find the last remaining deposits, and we will be burning ever-dirtier fuels.
Right now that's exactly what
is
happening.
