Peak Oil at the Fish Fryer 2

We use oil for absolutely everything and it has enabled us to develop an immensely complicated society and develop exponentially over the last two hundred years.

Oil is directly responsible for you being able to read this blog right yer, because a lot of powerstations are powered by oil, oil provided the plastics used to make your computer, the petrol to dig up, transport etc the raw components for everything around you that you can touch or see etc etc.

In short Oil is a big story.

So if oil production is running low and the top oil fields are tapping out, then we'll need to find more oil and develop some new technologies to replace it right?

We are finding new supplies of oil by the way, the problem for us is that they are relatively small finds.

A new well of 2 billion barrels sounds massive, but then when we look at the fact that the world uses approximately 85 million barrels per day, then you can see that 2 billion barrels isn't going to last that long, even if we found say ten of those fields in the next five years.

The demand for oil is increasing because the world's economy is getting bigger, there are more people who have moved from subsistance living to being 'consumers', all these people need to be fed, watered and to be able to live in a way that they aspire to.

The world's population is increasing by about 73 million per year at present rates.

This may slow down due to:

More women taking control of their own contraception.

Better healthcare which means that less children die in developing countries, so that eventually people realise that they don't have to produce so many.

And because as people's affluence levels rise, they realise that children cost lots of money and so tend to have less of them.

Then there's the fact that most of these new oil finds are at much deeper depths and in more inhospitable places than hoped for (Sakhalin for example).

First stop Ethanol.

Ethanol is going to make a lot of American grain farmers very rich. America is the world's largest corn producer and the vast majority of ethanol is produced from corn. Large amounts of the world's population rely upon corn as a staple food, but increasingly more and more corn has been used to produce ethanol which is mixed with gasoline to make it go further in terms of fuel consumption.

There are other types of ethanol and these are gradually increasing in uptake, such as cellulosic ethanol which uses the stems, leaves etc of the corn plant and can potentially use most types of organic plant waste. In years to come i'm sure that your lawnmower will have the ability to use the very grass that it cuts, as the fuel to drive it. Exciting huh?

But for the now, most ethanol is:

A) Made from corn cobs therefore taking a direct amount of food out of the supply chain
B) Produces less energy than it uses
C) Uses large amounts of water in its production

All very important points. Less food means more pressure for the food being reduced in the supply chain, paricularly for some of the world's poorest people whose diet is largely reliant upon it.

Producing less energy from it than it takes to make means that the fuel is inefficient and therefore is only a stopgap.

And using lots of water to produce it is extremely wasteful of the world's most precious resource.

So this leads back to how to find a wife. If you're reading this and thinking WTF? Please bear with me.

If our society is going to be effected by Peak Oil then will it be best to live in the city, where you potentially have good transport links etc or in the country where in theory you could grow your food and potentially produce your own power?

Of course in the city I'd find it easier to meet people, which may lead to meeting a fantastic woman and all the great things that come from that (hmm Krispy Kremes and Green Tea...), on the other hand I could meet a strong farm gal and dig for victory.

Tough choices huh?