[bobthebilda]

It doesnt really matter, the earth is never going to run out of oil anyhow. Even as this article says, the field may contain 60 million barrels, but they are only likely to ever recover 30 million barrels. The main issue comes down to how much energy in future, it takes to get oil out of the ground. 50 years ago, they drilled a hole on the land in Saudia Arabia, and 10,000 barrels would spill out a day, every day for 50 years plus. Today, they have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, to drill a hole kilometres out to sea, to get 10,000 barrels a day, for a few years. When they first started drilling for oil, they were getting over 100 units of energy, for every unit of energy they put into the project. Today the average about 10 to 15 units of energy recovered for every unit spent. Obviously once it gets down to 1 for 1, it becomes pointless, ie, you are not going to use one barrel of oil to get one barrel of oil out of the ground.

But most importantly, we are getting closer to the point, that oil extraction does not have a benefit to human society. Apart from costs that cant be attributed ( global warming, storm costs, rising sea levels etc), oil extraction of the future, is relying on the benefit of cheap and easy oil extracted before today. At some time in the future we will not have sufficient oil left over, to build the roads, build the oil platforms, fly the planes and helicopters, power the pumps etc etc, to look for more oil.