The Last Drop

The Last Drop

Humankind Post Oil & Gas

Dr. Issam Wadi


GBP 15,00

Format: 13,5 X 21,5
Number of Pages: 134
ISBN: 978-3-99064-115-6
Release Date: 14.02.2018
Take a moment to consider what the world would be like without oil and gas. Now take the time to learn the impact this could have on the world. The Last Drop is a must read for us all. It’s time we make changes to ensure the security of future generations.
Since its first commercial discovery in the 19th century, oil has been used as the main source of energy, and its production and consumption have increased exponentially, hence, it has become a dominant player in human development and growth. Today, it is used almost in every aspect of our lives, such as producing power, running machinery
and factories, powering cars and other means of transportation, besides producing many different commodities that have become integral parts of our lives, such as plastics, clothing, and electronics. Without oil, our lives would stall. Though many initiatives have been started in looking for alternative energy sources, in parallel with trying to find more sources of oil and gas, such as deep water and Arctic explorations, shale gas, shale oil, tar sand, etc. Many recent studies show that even if we are successful in producing more from these new and challenging sources, it is not foreseen that recoverable and commercially feasible oil and gas fuels will be affordable for more than a few more decades. As explained later in this book, it is obvious that the decline in the oil and gas production and reserve curves, has started, and are expected to commence in a steep downturn soon. In the past decade or so, many countries have started considering new sources of energy, such as renewable energy, as well as increasing their dependence on nuclear energy and using the remaining coal. Adding to this, the continuous growth in the world populations and the unprecedented economic growth in some countries (such as China and India), will accelerate the depletion rate of the world’s remaining oil and gas reserves. It is foreseeable that some of the post-oil and gas challenges, can be handled adequately and smoothly by using new sources of energy, such as replacing gasoline- and diesel-driven cars by electric cars and replacing fossil-fuel power by nuclear or renewable energy power stations. In the cases of aviation and shipping, the challenges are going to be harder and not easily resolved, due to the nature of the problem, especially for long-haul and heavy travel. Some of these applications will need decades of extensive research, supported by huge investments, to find suitable and viable alternatives. As discussed later in Chapter 5.0, there are many other post-oil and gas challenges that we are going to face, such as finding suitable replacements for plastics. Therefore, we urgently need to start
looking for alternative commodities as considerable lead time will be needed to find and develop these to meet the huge volume involved. Some of these services and commodities are critical to the health, comfort, and safety of humanity. Without them, people are going to suffer, businesses will be affected adversely, factories will shut down, and our daily lives will slow down or stop. Examples of some of these commodities are plastics-based medical items and tools, computers, clothes, and mobile electronic devices, to mention but a few. To add to the challenge, we should not ignore situations where oil and gas supplies are not enough or not feasibly available, which could lead to instability, eruptions of major wars, and political conflicts.. This book discusses, in its first few sections, the history and trends of the oil and gas industry since its early days, production and consumption patterns, and future trends. It then addresses the foreseen impact, caused by the absence of oil and gas, on almost every aspect of our lives, followed by a discussion of possible mitigation, plans, and solutions that need to be pursued to handle such impacts, in a humble attempt to avoid or reduce the foreseeable serious consequences. It also discusses alternative energy sources such as, biofuels (fuels
produced from living matters), new transportation means and technology (the Hyperloop, rocket-like planes, electric vehicles), biopolymers; besides maximizing renewable energy production and usage. A large part of this book deals with the effect of oil and gas on the
main aspects and needs of the world, such as social life, urban planning, world economies, education systems, technology development, medical systems, clothing and textile industries, military systems, and arms design, among others. The book also includes sections on the agriculture and food industries, and how these are affected by the absence of oil and gas, besides the impact of alternative energy sources, such as biofuel, on the availability of food, water, and the agricultural sector in general. Although I have spent over forty years of my life in the oil and gas industry, thrived on it, learned from it, built my career and earned my living from it, I could not and will never claim that I have all the experience and knowledge, needed, to solve the foreseen huge problems after oil and gas, nor do I claim that have addressed all of the issues, problems, and challenges, although I tried. I spent months, researching all of the related areas and technologies, referred to the latest R&D worldwide, read many books on related subject matter and
relevant reports, and held discussions with many experts from different backgrounds and countries, and still can’t claim that I have covered everything, or that whatever I propose herein are the ultimate and only solutions. This is the best I could do in such limited time, and the floor is open for discussions, comments, suggestions, and further work by others. This is the beginning. The challenge is big, diversified, complex, and multi-fold; it therefore needs an army of scientists from over 50 disciplines and specialties, many research centers with enough funding for decades, so that we can all address it adequately, professionally, and successfully. Such research, to meet its objectives, needs to be supported by an international body with a global plan and collective effort by all countries, to ensure a smooth transition from an “Oil and Gas” dependent world to a “Non-Oil and Gas” dependent world. In a nutshell, the purpose of this book is to send an alert, create awareness, and invite the world to start planning, thinking, researching, and executing a collective and global plan as early as possible. Due to the complexity and size of the problem, if it is not handled probably, it is going to affect the lives of our children and
grandchildren in a big way. The most ironic thing of all is that after all these years of being heavily involved in managing, developing, and working in this great industry, in
which I always have been proud to be one of its soldiers, now comes the time that I write about its death!!!

2.0 OIL & GAS TODAY
More than 60 years ago, geoscientist M. King Hubbert proposed his Peak Oil Theory. According to this theory, oil production would peak at one point and then start declining until its full depletion. As predicted by Hubbert’s theory, we have started the decline already, and have only a few decades remaining until the world’s oil is fully depleted.
British Petroleum has estimated that the world has approximately
1.7 trillion barrels of proved oil and gas equivalent (equivalent refers to the energy value of each type of fuel, so can be compared or combined) in reserve. Shale oil, according to Energy Information Agency studies, is estimated worldwide, as “technically recoverable”
around 345 billion barrels; however this does not mean it will be “economically recoverable.” Some studies challenge these optimistic estimates, and reports on United States shale oil have shown concern and doubt regarding these figures, although the cost of production of shale oil has come down significantly in the past few years, and technology is improving by the day. These estimates include the Canadian Oil Sands, estimated at over 160 billion barrels. The Arctic area is being targeted as well and explored actively. One of the main challenges being faced by humanity is population growth, overuse of the planet’s finite resources, and the dumping of waste, which makes it hard for our environment to accommodate. The answer today, as concluded by Paul Chefurka, is “sustainability”; he describes a “sustainable population’’ as “one that can survive
over the long term (thousands to tens of thousands of years), without either running out of resources or damaging its environmental niche (in our case, the planet) in the process’’. He has added that this means that our numbers and level of activity must not generate more waste than the natural processes can return to the biosphere, so the wastes
we do generate do not harm the biosphere, and that most of the resources we use are either renewable through natural processes or are entirely recycled if they are not renewable. Paul Chefurka has developed models for population growth, and has concluded that that the current population is not sustainable. He also concluded that with the
decline of oil, which is an important supporter of what is called the “carrying capacity” and since oil will be depleted in a few decades, then a population decline is inevitable. His model shows that a sustainable population will need to be 1 billion in 75 years, which is a big challenge to achieve based on a decline in birth rate. Many studies have shown a strong correlation between the world Gross Domestic Product and consumption of energy, which explains the strong contribution of oil to the world’s “activity level”, hence its
impact on the ‘’carrying capacity’’ of the earth.

3.0 THE ILLUSIVE GOLDEN CENTURY
I would call the century following the 1940’s when oil started to become an essential commodity in our lives, not only as an important source of energy but also as the foundation for many other essential items used by us every day “the illusive golden century.” The entire world enjoyed the new energy source, consumed it with little or
no caution or wisdom, whatsoever; in fact, over-relied on it. This commodity was abused in a way that caused damage to the environment, contributed to an exponential increase in population beyond the “carrying capacity” of the environment, as stated by Paul Chefurka,
plus made many oil producing countries fully dependent on it for their development and growth; furthermore, it made many of them “high-income economies.” Many of these countries, though enjoying the benefits and revenues from oil and gas production for decades,have provided a high standard of living for their people with little or no real industrial or technological development, and so have not benefited from this highly unsustainable revenue to build a robust and productive economy that is based on industrial knowledge, technological development, and equitable social conditions that can be sustained and used in a post oil and gas era. This phenomenon is very visible and obvious in many third world countries, hence the recent downturn of the oil industry has brought huge negative impacts on most of them. People in these countries, to a large extent, have lived the “illusion of oil and gas”; become dependent, complacent, and less or even non-productive, assuming that such natural wealth will last forever, and hence are never prepared for the “post oil and gas” era. I do not think that human beings have lived such hugely illusive experiences like this, or pursued such lavish lifestyles, since the start of human civilization thousands of years ago. The approach to this precious and valuable gift from god (which needed tens of millions of years to evolve and be transformed into oil), has been highly short-sighted, causing harm to earth and making many nations fully dependent upon it. Our children and grandchildren will be the victims of our irresponsibility, negligence, and short-sightedness. A good example of countries who started so early, preparing for this inevitable destiny is United Arab Emirates (UAE), who started diversifying its economy some years ago, so its economy is less dependent on oil. In fact, the leadership in UAE said last year; ‘’UAE shall celebrate the day when the last oil barrel
is shipped from UAE’’. Fossil fuels (refers to all types of fuels produced from earth such as oil, gas and coal) contributed extensively to the second and third industrial revolutions; today we are not sure whether the speed and acceleration with which that happened was the optimum or best for humanity. That is yet to see. I believe that the fast development
of the world economy, by large, was driven by the greed of companies and businesses, who created the consuming society, which was consuming energy, commodities, and other relevant services without justification. As per most analysis, the world has consumed roughly double of what it really needed of energy and relevant commodities. This, in turn, has reduced by half the time available for this resource on earth, which will forbid future generations from benefiting by it, as well as give humanity time to prepare for alternative sources and means.
We started consuming fossil fuels in the last half of the 19th century, however our consumption started to rise exponentially by the mid 60’s of last century, as seen in the curve above. This curve predicts that the fossil fuel peak (not oil and gas alone) is happening in the next 1–2 decades, while as per other estimates, like those of M. King Hubbert, the oil peak has passed already. In best estimates, the decline in fossil
fuels will start soon. Adding to this, coal is not always a suitable fuel to be used to replace crude oil and gas in many applications and usages, such as aviation, cars, etc. Not to mention the impact on our environment. Also, producing gas or oil from coal is not always easy or economically feasible. Furthermore, major parts of the existing reserves are not
easily or economically recoverable, which makes the situation worse. As discussed previously, in the 50’s of the last century, Hubbert expected that the oil production curve would take the form of a bell shaped curve. Hubbert, in his analysis more than 60 years ago, predicted that American oil production would peak in the 1970s. Furthermore, he used the same method to predict the peak in global oil production. He estimated
that global oil would peak in the mid-1990s, which he later adjusted after the 1973 oil crisis by shifting the peak by 10 to 15 years. According to analyses done later, Hubbert’s estimates were relatively accurate when compared to the actual oil production.
Human population has started to rise exponentially along with the rise
of oil production. I believe the increase in population was triggered initially by the discoveries and massive usage of coal, which started earlier than oil in the 19th century.
According to British Petroleum statistics of 2016 (1), the world has about 6600 trillion Standard Cubic Feet of reserve gas, which are estimated to last for about 52 years.
In gas studies, analysis, predictions, and production, one of the big challenges is recoverability, which can be as low as 35%. Also, the gas quality can be an issue. Based on my forty years of experience in the oil and gas business, no matter what reservoir modelling and simulation tools companies use, or how much experience they have, there
is always some kind of uncertainties, surprises, and unpredictable results in gas reservoirs and fields, either related to depletion rates compared to estimates, gas quality unexpectedly changes in some cases (e.g., the gas turns extremely sour after certain period of production), or recoverability becomes too difficult and/or too costly. Furthermore,
there are always challenges with gas re-injection2 to enhance oil recovery; this, in turn, can reduce available gas for production. As to the shale gas story in the USA, there has been extensive work done by Berman (24) using mathematical models for thousands of wells in the Barnett, Fayetteville, and Haynesville shales. He has concluded that operators have significantly exaggerated their claims, and he has added that reserves appear to be overstated by more than 100 percent. He has added that, ”typically, the core 10 to
15 percent of the shale formation’s gas is commercially viable. The rest may or may not be.” Berman, using his model, estimates that production falls steeply for the first 10 to 15 months, followed by a weekly hyperbolic decline.
5 Stars
most relevant - 10.11.2021
Johan

Well this is happening

5 Stars
CEO TALA TOURISM  - 28.03.2021
Osama Dursi

Thank you

You might like this too :

The Last Drop

Roger Murphy

MURPHY v The Football Association

Book rating:
*mandatory fields