Why are most oil reserves located in the middle east?

Question

Was there once more oil in the US but we pumped it all? Has anyone looked in the Pacific Ocean?

Answer 1

Back in the 1960's it was reported that there was 25 years of oil reserves left in the world. It was common a decade or two to report the quantity of oil remaining in a manner that suggested that no new oil fields would ever be discovered, or that improved techniques that better recovered by existing oil fields would never be supplanted by better techniques that would recover far more oil from the reservoir.

As for new, undiscovered oil for the future, I think you can look to underdeveloped countries in the world as being possibilities. By that I am including locations such as Northern Canada, Greenland, Africa, Southeast Asia, even China or Siberia, or for practical purposes, 2/3'rds of the landmass in the world.

There is also the potential, as you state yourself, for discovery of oil in the Oceans and Seas of the world. Again, the lower the current development level of the nation, the less the potential of oil has been pursued. Certainly areas adjacent to the Mid-East would seem likely locations for oil. The Persian Gulf, or the Red Sea, or the Indian Ocean for instance.

The Caspian Sea or the Black Sea are a couple of more possibilities.

These areas are relatively expensive to develop in comparison to the gushers that occur on land in the Mid East and it is easy to see why they might be ignored until the land based reserves diminish. The US certainly did not develop off-shore oil until the land oil was no longer able to meet the needs of the nation.

There is also one other currently untapped source of hydrocarbon energy in the US. The Alaskan Oil Fields have tremendous quantities of Natural Gas. Currently the companies running these fields are reinjecting this gas back into the field. A pipeline would be necessary to utilize this natural gas, and is being proposed by the oil field operators.

Possibly the more important question though is with even some Neocon's admitting that global warming is real and is being caused by the burning of coal and petroleum products, do we need to develop more oil, or should be be allowing oil to decline while we invest in renewable energy sources to take the place of some of the oil we are currently using?.

Solar and Wind energy would actually have the effect of countering some of the impact of the burning of Oil and Coal because it would not only back off oil, but it would take natural "heat" and convert it into usable energy.

Answer 2

oil forms from the deposition of organic matter, there needs to be millions of years after deposition to allow the layers to squeeze and transform the organic material into oil.

Millions of years ago the area that is now the middle east was a place of high organic deposition. Similar to the great barrier reef in Australia, where many life forms are concentrated in a relatively small space.

As the organic material was deposited over and the weight of overlying layers squeezed them it produced oil. Now there is a large strip of oil in the middle east.

The same thing has happened in many other parts of the world (like Alaska, Southern California, Texas etc.) and all for the same reasons.

Hope that was somewhat clear :o)

Answer 3

Thats where theres oil.We rather buy oil,and hold ares till we need it.Butt at this rate we will be gone.Alaska got oil lots of oil Goverment oil.