What Quantity remains of crude oil down the earth ?

Question

Please let me know the balance quantity of crude oil remains.

Answer 1

That's a good question, and one riddled with more questions. First off, oil in the ground is not the same as oil at the pump. Take a dry kitchen sponge. Pour Wesson oil on it. Let it sit for a couple of hours. Now take a tiny coffee straw, and try to suck the oil out of the sponge. How much can you recover? A small fraction of what's in there. Now imagine doing the same with rock.

The second question is- what do you consider oil? Light, sweet crude from which gasoline and other light fractions are made, or asphaltenes which are useful for making pavement but perform poorly in your new Mazda? One is more desirable than the other.

World Energy Resources Program of the USGS estimates 1,000 gigabarrels remain in the ground (reference 1), with an additional 275 to 1,469 gigabarrels "undiscovered." A barrel in oil terms, by the way, is 42 gallons.

The problem is that these numbers aren't real, and they aren't realistic. First off, OPEC nations are limited to the amount of oil they can pump on the basis of their reserves. The member countries lie about how much they have in order to pump similar quantities of oil and, therefore, receive as much money as they can in such an oligopoly. The second problem is that these figures can't accommodate how much one can recover from a given well, nor how much can be extracted from alternative reservoirs including oil shale, oil sands (Athabascan range), and other resources.

In other words, nobody knows. The 1,000 gigabarrels is a good starting point.

Answer 2

In working (past) for Mobil Oil, current crude reserves are at 632 years (under current consumption). And with 2700 synthetic fuel patents including the process by which we can make crude itself synthetically (AGC 21 Technology/Advanced Gas Conversion 21 Technology), the argument comes down to refinery capacity. The merger of the majors is what has done in the world. Many of us knew that our government would fail in maintaining competition through the various mergers. The damage is done and we as a nation will continue to feel the pain until they break-up the companies. We have just Six world oil's in every respect !!

Answer 3

I suppose you could say "yes" - but at a very slow rate. Converting organic matter to oil, under extreme (but naturally caused) pressure, takes millions of years. The total accumulation of oil in the earth took over a billion (thousand million) years to produce. Humanity's consumption of oil has only been going on for 150 years, or so, at a prodigious rate. There's no way that natural production could make a measurable difference in increasing availability.

Answer 4

Roughly 1 trillion barrels of oil has been produced thus far, and some believe that it's about half gone right now.  That would leave roughly 1 trillion barrels of (recoverable) oil.

This does not include tar sands, oil shale, etc.  However, their recoverability is doubtful.

Answer 5

Only about enough for another 30-50 yrs

Answer 6

No one knows. Some try to make "educated" guesses based on previous discoveries.