_{Chapter 7}

_{The hour of truth}

 _{From "Unexhaustible? Petroleum and Natural Gas". D.Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones}

_{There is a widespread belief in the world of energy policy and petroleum geology that mineral fuels, usually dubbed “fossils” are nearly exhausted.}

_{What vary it the forescast ot their exhaustion. Some think that in 10 or 15 years the shortage is going to be noticed. Other optimists argue that mineral fuels will last more than 50 years, and even a century.}

_{Uncertainties about future supply prospects so important from the point of technological, economic and political resources are demonstrative of the lack of a single model to analyze the issue.}

_{In the 1950s, a Texas geologist named M. King Hubbert developed a curve as an analytical tool to predict the performance of the oil fields from discovery to exploitation, depletion and abandonment. This curve, now known as “Hubbert curve” allowed analyzing all the oilfields and forecast production capacity. In fact, many of Hubbert’s predictions were fulfilled.}

_{His curve was quite effective in predicting incapacity of US petroleum fields to meet the growing demand of the country. According to this curve it was expected that from 1970 on, the country would cease to be self-sufficient, which actually happened. In recent years several specialists in oil issues have attempted to apply the Hubbert curve with varying success.}

_{Current world consumption of oil amounts to about 100 million barrels per day, or 35,000 million per year, with demand growing at a rate of 3% annually.}

_{The predictions were originally alleged available reserves of 2 billion barrels of recoverable oil (2,000,000,000,000 barrels) and half of them may  have already been extracted (so would not only remove one trillion barrels).}

_{To spend half of the reserves (which would be happening now), according to the Hubbert curve, would begin a phase of rapid decline.Therefore, always according to these predictions, we would be starting to suffer the first symptoms of the final oil crisis.}

_{This forecast is based on the widespread belief that oil is fossil inn origin, and can only be extracted from sedimentary basins.}

_{As the sedimentary basins have limited volumes, then hydrocarbon reserves would also be limited in a similar proportion.}

_{In this scenario, it would imply an accelerated increase in oil prices, massive economic imbalances related to energy production, and growing social and political instability.}

_{This situation would not have an apparent solution in sight because it would be very difficult, even impossible, to achieve a substantial reduction of energy world consumption, and there will be no alternative sources to within a few years to meet the growing needs of an overpopulated planet whose economies are based on the energy intensive technologies..}

_{If, however, we apply the theory of planetary degassing and the deep biosphere concept of Thomas Gold, the conclusions would be very different.}

_{First, due to the presence of hydrocarbons in all geological formations, including igneous and metamorphic rocks, we should recalculate inventories (reserves) of oil at regional and global level.}

_{Moreover, as the formation of oil and natural gas occur in depth, there would be much larger volumes of hydrocarbons contained in the deep layers of the crust and even in the upper mantle.}

_{It is possible that the amount of oil available on the planet is several orders of magnitude greater than that normally predicted. Perhaps there is oil and natural gas in sufficient volumes to supply humanity for many centuries, even millennia.}

_{As oil (according to Gold) is a derivative of the natural gas (methane and others) its quantities are only limited by the physical-chemical conditions necessary for its formation. However, considering the natural gas stocks (particularly methane) available volumes oof petroleum may be enormous, thousands or hundreds of thousands of times larger than those usually considered.  To this fact, it should be added the content of methane hydrates in the bottom of the oceans which are extremely abundant and contain high proportions of gas (at ordinary pressure 168 liters of methane-gas per liter of solid methane hydrates).}

_{In other words, according to the theory of planetary degassing, it can be said that, by adapting existing technologies to the consumption of gas, there would not be shortages for a long time, perhaps thousands of years.}

_{However, environmental impacts can be felt much sooner. First, by the increase of carbon dioxide (the current content is 400 ppm increasing approximately 2 ppm per year) and other greenhouse gases (including methane and other gaseous hydrocarbons (including methne) and secondly , by the latent risk of excessive combustion (oxidation) of hydrocarbons might end up affecting the oxygen content in the atmosphere. The latter situation would be of the utmost gravity and for that reason it corresponds ensure that this does not happen.}

_{At present oxygen is dropping 2 parts per million annually. As there+ are 210,000 ppm of oxygen in the atmosphere decrease appears irrelevant, however because the indispensability of oxygen for animal and human life these changes should be monitored carefully.}