Rasoul Sorkhabi Research Professor, Energy and Geoscience Institute Guest Columnist
We are in a time of high oil and gasoline prices. This year the oil price has reached $50 a barrel and gasoline prices are nearly $2 a gallon. We are also hearing about the end of the oil age and the coming energy crisis.
This year alone, I have read five books on this subject, including The End of Oil by Paul Roberts. Major magazines have published articles such as "The End of Cheap Oil," from National Geographic and "The End of the Oil Age," from Economist. There are several Web sites on the Internet promoting this topic as well.
Are we really at the end of the oil age? Is this yet another instance of crying wolf or is the wolf really here this time?
Predictions of oil's future are difficult and uncertain, so is an evaluation of these predictions. All predictions are based on certain assumptions, estimations and projections, which may or may not be true, either quantitatively or qualitatively.
For example, we make estimations about the total volume of oil resources. But no one really knows how much oil exists, even though we know it's finite.
The point I would like to highlight here is a well-known phrase among the old generations of petroleum geologists: Oil is first found in the mind.
This phrase, which seems to have been forgotten, was first stated by Wallace Pratt, a prominent petroleum geologist from the past century. Pratt died on Christmas day in 1981 at the age of 96. His most famous speech and article is titled, "Toward the philosophy of oil-finding," published in 1952.
Pratt wrote, "This conviction of our best minds that little or no oil remained to be found has continuously handicapped the search for oil...When no man any longer believes more oil is left to be found, no more oil field will be discovered."
We may think that this quote, dating back half a century, represented a common belief in those days because there were vast areas to be explored and that the message has no truth now because geologists have discovered all the oil since then.
But note that Pratt made the comment in reply to the doomsayers and pessimists of his own time. In 1920, geologists at the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the world's supply of conventional, recoverable petroleum was 60 billion barrels and forecasted that the end of oil would come within a decade. Today, the world's proven oil reserves are about 1,100 billion barrels, and this is in addition to 900 billion barrels that have already been produced.
Resources become recoverable reserves through knowledge, action and technology. Resources are natural products. Reserves result from human efforts. Pessimism cannot grow reserves.
Of course, wishful thinking does not find oil, either. Petroleum is not found everywhere we drill.
Petroleum usually exists in sedimentary basins and before we drill a prospect, we need to identify a source rock that has generated oil, a reservoir rock that stores it, and a subsurface trapping structure that preserves it. Indeed, petroleum exploration and production involves so much investment and technology that oil-the product of a complex industry-should not be underpriced.
Nonetheless, exploration and discovery not only require scientific knowledge and technological capabilities, but also a positive attitude.
Pessimists and negative thinkers do not discover oil because their minds are already at a dead end with no space and time for innovation, vision and solutions.
Oil is first discovered in the minds of exploration geoscientists. What is considered an unconventional form of petroleum today (i.e., tar sands) may become conventional tomorrow. Unrecoverable petroleum today (about 60 percent of oil that still remains underground in the existing oil fields) may be recoverable tomorrow.
This human factor has significance and relevance not only for managers and explorers in the industry, but also for students and teachers in universities because the petroleum industry is still the largest employer of geoscience graduates in the world.
The successful explorers of the near future are those who can combine their science and skills with a positive spirit and creative thoughts.
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