Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
that huge, new reserves will be found and that the supply
problem will vanish. A realist would say that is very
unlikely and we had better start doing something about
oil consumption. Oil will start to become much more
expensive after
when we have used the second tril-
lion barrels, and it will eventually run out. Other methods
of fueling transportation will be needed. I will discuss how
and what in the chapter on ef
ciency.
.
World Gas Reserves
Worldwide natural gas consumption today amounts to
about
trillion cubic meters (TCM) per year. In
energy content this is equal to
.
% of TPES. The IEA
projection is that gas demand will increase by about
%
per year. The Middle East, particularly Qatar, and Russia
have about
.
TCM of proven reserves of
conventional gas. The estimate of
% of the
total conventional
reserves is about
TCM, but exploration has not been
as thorough as it has been for oil and there may be much
more. If there is not, there will be insuf
cient natural gas
to last until the end of the century.
Like oil reserves, gas reserves are divided into conven-
tional and unconventional reserves. Unconventional in
the gas case means anything different from that recover-
able from the standard wells, and these reserves were
estimated to be another
TCM. We know now that
there is much more unconventional gas; the problem is
getting at it. New technologies have made gas accessible
from coal beds too deep to mine, and from gas trapped in
the shale beds that are abundant in the United States and
in other parts of the world. The shale beds are typically
