Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
But the number of new fi nds, specifi cally of oil, has declined substantially during
recent years, and new supplies cannot be exploited fast enough to meet rising
demand. In the long term oil prices will therefore continue to rise, even if brief dips
in prices seem to signal an easing of the situation. On one hand demand is rising,
whereas supplies tend to be dwindling; and on the other hand the effort needed to
exploit new supplies is increasing along with the costs.
During the fi rst commercial drilling in America in 1859 oil could be found at depths
of 20 m, whereas today drilling depths of up to 10 000 m are no longer uncommon.
Signifi cant technical progress has also been made in locating possible deposits, and
so we know far more today about possible fi nds than we did several decades ago.
However, this also makes it highly unlikely that any major new fi nds will be
discovered.
At the current rate of production the known supplies in the USA and Great Britain
will be depleted in about a decade. This increases the dependency, particularly of
the industrialized nations, on a small number of producing countries. More than
60% of extractable oil supplies are found in the Middle East (Figure 1.9). The
biggest oil producers in the region are Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates.
15
3
7
14
6
100 Gt
14
assumed
additional
global
resources
already
exploited
reserves still
available (in Gt)
82 Gt
Figure 1.9
Distribution of oil reserves on earth by region.
Status 2004.
This region has been the scene of major confl icts in recent years, and its large oil
reserves are likely to increase tensions even further in the future. The dependency
of the industrialized nations on the OPEC countries will also increase because these
countries have almost three-quarters of the known reserves.
The current extent of availability can be calculated by dividing the known exploit-
able reserves by current production. In the case of oil, this is about 43 years (see
