Here’s a thought about entitlement. Before we started pumping it all out, there were about 6 trillion barrels of oil on our planet. By the best estimates, we’ve got about half of that left. There is currently a population of 6.5 billion people on the earth, and, if we all get a good crack at life, we might live, say, 70 years on average.
Time regardless, if this generation divvied up all the oil evenly, (3 x 10^12 / 6.5 x 10^9) we would get about 462 barrels of oil each. No so bad, really. At least enough for a few good road trips. But then, there’s still time.
Based on Keyfitz’ population calculations, which estimate human reproductive cycles to average out to 25 years, the total number of people to have lived over the course of the million years Homosapiens has been rocking out is 96 100 000 000 bodies. We divide that by our six trillion initial barrels, and we get 62.4 barrels a piece. At ~159L per barrel, that’s still a decent 9926L. But that’s giving oil a 289 million year head start.
Now, the actual length of time it takes for oil to form is a bit difficult to gauge. No oil has been discovered that is younger than one million years old. The majority of the oil stores found date back to the carboniferous era, between 354 and 290 million years ago. There are many, many factors that weigh into the production of oil, including availability of organic matter, temperature, pressure, so just picking a number for the time needed for oil to form is not going to be that accurate, so let’s play conservatively and pick the median between 290 and 1 million: 144.5 million years.
If oil had to build from a zero reserve, given our estimate of time of development of oil, some 144.5 million years, we get a total of 41 522 barrels a year. Divided by us living hominids, times our 70 years of life, and we get… a whopping 4.47 x 10^-4 barrels, or 70mL of oil each. Total. In our lives.
Given a crude energy density approximately equivalent to gasoline, and that’s enough to drive a 2008 (non-hybrid) Honda Civic some 1500m.
How far can this take us?
IMAGE CREDIT: here.
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