In Santos Basin, Brazil, a new oil field that is projected to hold up to 15 billion barrels of recoverable oil was tapped into on October 29, 2010. Even though the actual oil predicted to hold is 7.5 billion barrels, Brazil has high hopes that from this new oil field, Brazil's current proven reserves of 14 billion barrels will be surpassed. Over the past two years, Brazil has discovered billions of barrels of oil in offshore fields, and experts estimate that more than 55 billion barrels of oil can be found in all of the fields combined.
Now, this article makes me wonder how much of the projections about how we are going to run out of oil in ten, twenty, or barely thirty years (depending on the source) is true. There are many oil fields that are untapped, undiscovered, and unpredicted. Even though the growth in the use of oil is more exponential than linear, there are continual news reports stating that new oil fields are found. In the Middle East, there are probably many many oil fields that are undiscovered due to the under development in those nations. I'm not saying that I'm against alternate energy, but is it really worth it to try to find an alternate energy source that can one day replace oil then? Of course there are other reasons to develop alternate energy, such as the negative environmental impacts oil drilling cause, but are the time and effort to develop new energies really worth it?
source: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/10/29/business-lt-brazil-oil_8059176.html
A skeptic will say that any resource, no matter what it is, will run out eventually. A believer will say by the time oil runs out the world would have already developed a backup system to deal with it. I say it's a race to find out what can surpass oil- like creating something that is more abundant able to be commercialized, and more efficient than fossil fuels.
ReplyDeleteThis new found oil in brasil does go along with what the army guest speaker guy said about South America/Africa having much more undiscovered oil than projected. And more oil is still being found everyday, so I too am wondering if spending so much time and money on alternative energies is practical? Would spending that all that money and time on oil technology advancements to make fossil fuels more efficient be a better alternative? Either ways the oil out there will eventually be depleted, I'm glad that many people realize that and are trying to do something about it.
ReplyDeleteI think its great that Brazil found more oil fields that increase the world supply. However, this just creates another country that the U.S. can depend on and import oil from. The U.S. will probably not discover any new oil fields and we will still be running on our diminishing reserves. We still need to focus on having alternative energy sources so that we remain fairly independent from other countries.
ReplyDeletethe world today consumed too much oil. We are polluting the land, water, and air. carbon emissions is a common topics among environmentalists. we have been hearing for years "oil is reaching its end." but is it? around the world, more and more oil is being discovered. the total reserve keeps rising. we are constantly looking for green alternatives such as biomass, wind, and solar, but these methods just don't put out what good ol' gasoline does. so we keep driving our high consumption sports cars and SUVs. because they perform the way we like. until there REALLY is a scarcity of oil, i don't believe our government will sink the money into green energy that it will take to make it a replacement for oil. when our tanks and hummers HAVE to run on something else, that's when we will make a breakthrough. so keep on discovering. oil consumption is only going to rise until it's all gone. then the world will change.
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