The Earth contains a finite amount of oil. Burned to power our vehicles, heat our homes and light our cities, this fuel is a nonrenewable resource. So when Peter Maass, author of “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil,” asked experts how much oil remains, it was not an innocuous question. The answer could spur or doom research into alternative energy sources, even sustain or overthrow governments.
Oil barons around the world, though, confidently reassured Maass. As of this year, they insist, the world’s reserves of crude amount to 1.258 trillion barrels.
How do they know?
“That’s more than the $64,000 question, or even the $64 million question,” said Maass, who will discuss his adventures in this slippery business at UCSD’s Revelle Forum next Monday. “It’s beyond the $64 billion question. Just how much oil is out there?”
That figure, 1.258 trillion barrels, is an estimate based on geological and seismic tests — plus plenty of Saudi-style assurances that, trust us, the stuff is down there.
As an industry, oil embraces science and faith.
Crude oil is pumped out of the Niger Delta, the deserts of Kuwait, the steppes of Kazakhstan, Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo and dozens of other locales around the world. Even before 2009, a banner year for oil exploration with more than 200 fields discovered, rigs rose over an incredible variety of terrain. Geologists, though, prefer to focus on the striking similarities underground.
Everywhere, oil tries to escape its subterranean prison. “Oil and gas migrate to the surface,” said Mark Zumberge, a research geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “because they are lighter than water.”
Oil fields are not vast underground lakes. Rather, Zumberge explained, imagine narrow ribbons of oil collecting in porous spaces within arching sediment. These folds, known as anticlines, are capped by a solid layer of impermeable rock. “Over the millenia,” he said, “that rock has trapped oil and gas.”
That’s true on land and under sea, where Scripps’ work has long been vital to the oil industry.
At first, the industry examined data the La Jolla institute had assembled for its own, non-oil purposes. Since the mid-20th century, for example, Scripps researchers have used air guns to map the contours of the sea. Towed beneath the waves, these instruments blast air toward the ocean floor. When the air waves hit the bottom and bounce back, they paint a picture of the undersea landscape.
To geologists, these images are like maps to buried treasure. “They know the sorts of environments that are conducive to making oil,” said Steve Constable, a Scripps professor of geophysics, “and the sorts of environments that are conducive to trapping oil.”
What began as an occasional partnership has developed into something deeper. Scripps is partnering with 36 companies in oil exploration, said Constable, whose laboratory is developing an electromagnetic technique for pinpointing underwater deposits.
These experiments are rooted in the fact that oil and gas “are electronically more resistant than the salt water around the rock,” Constable said. “It’s an insulator.”
To test a patch of the sea floor for oil or gas, Constable’s team first seed the underwater area with instruments to record electronic and magnetic fields. Next they tow a 200-meter antenna about 160 feet above the sea floor; shoot 400 amps through the antenna; then look to see which undersea rocks glow brightest, indicating they are most resistive.
“If resistive,” Constable said, “they may be full of oil and gas.”
Zumberge, meanwhile, is measuring variations in the Earth’s gravity to find oil. Water is denser than gas; gas is denser than oil; and these variations alter the gravitational force. Slightly.
“We’re talking parts per billion,” Zumberge said.
The second question
When a new oil find is announced, oil companies routinely estimate the number of barrels in the field. The Iara, Brazil, field, discovered in 2008: 3 billion barrels. Miran West in Iran, reported earlier this year: almost 2 billion. BP’s Gulf of Mexico announcement this summer: 4 billion.
How do they know?
These estimates are based on several factors: the speed with which the oil gushes out, the depth of the well and the “structure” — that is, the geologic formation — that contains the field.
There’s also the track record of the company or country announcing the find. Some are more credible than others. Take BP’s estimate of 4 billion. “In all likelihood,” said Don Gauthier, project chief with the U.S. Geologic Survey’s Central Energy Project, “that estimate is conservative.”
Gauthier, part of a federal team tracking global oil reserves, doesn’t believe that the world is close to running dry. We may be able to extract an additional 1 trillion barrels from existing fields, he maintains, thanks to new techniques, such as using steam to push more oil out. West African waters show great potential, he said. Unconventional sources, like turning oil shale or natural gas into liquified fuels, could boost reserves to nearly 10 trillion barrels.
At the world’s current rate of consumption — 30 billion barrels of liquid hydrocarbons a year — that’s enough to meet current global demand for another three centuries.
Is this possible? Yes, Gauthier said. “But the second question always has to be, at what cost?”
The battle
That cost can be figured in purely economic terms — California’s flirtation with $5-a-gallon gasoline last year was an unhappy one — but Maass’ book focuses on the human costs. “Black gold” has done nothing to enrich the people of Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria. It has poisoned the water and soil of Azerbaijan. It has corrupted bankers and politicians from Moscow to Washington, D.C.
The industry may also be haunted by a third question: When? When will the costs, human or economic, become prohibitive? When, if you heed the “peak oilers,” will our pumps run dry?
“Peak oil” is the theory that when oil production and reserves peak, the inevitable decline will herald an era of ever-climbing prices, shortages and cutthroat competition for a vanishing commodity.
“Everybody believes in peak oil in the sense that at some point — if it hasn’t happened already — we are going to peak,” Maass said. “The question is, are we there now or are we about to be there shortly?”
This means it’s critical to have an accurate assessment of global oil reserves. Given the vast sums of money and power that oil bestows upon its producers, though, an accurate assessment may be the last thing we should expect.
“That is a battle — and ‘battle’ is probably the right word — that has been going on for decades,” said Monte Marshall, geology sciences professor emeritus at San Diego State University.
For now, it’s a battle of words, of vague claims made and solid information withheld. Maass, a reporter for The New York Times Magazine, journeyed last year to Saudi Arabia to report on the world’s largest oil exporter. Despite repeated requests, though, the oil minister would not see him. Nor would any other government figure.
Finally, an oil ministry spokesman agreed to a brief and unsatisfying session. His message: The Kingdom will not divulge any data to support its claim that it holds 21 percent of the world’s oil reserves. But don’t worry.
“There is no reason for any country or company to lie,” the spokesman told Maass. “There is a lot of oil around.”
Scripps’ Constable, a man of science, is not reassured by such appeals to faith in unseen trillions of barrels. He’s well aware of the recent finds in Iraq, the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. Moreover, he believes that his own electromagnetic experiments will uncover new undersea oil fields.
“But,” he concluded, “we’re still burning it faster than we’re discovering it.”
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