Crude oil and wild strawberries
September 26th, 2006 by Jim JustSwedish professor of physics Kjell Aleklett likens crude oil to u-pick strawberry fields. The first picker picks the big ones. The last one is left with the small ones. That means it’s harder to fill the basket. Each day the world gulps down 82 million barrels of oil—virtually the same amount that is produced. The United States Energy Information Agency projects consumption to increase to 103 million barrels per day in 2015, and 119 million barrels each day by 2025. That means global production must increase by 45 per cent just to keep pace with ordinary economic growth. But no one can say where all that extra oil will come from. Skyrocketing world population and industrial growth since the 1800s has resulted in an exponential increase in energy consumption, driven by cheap and abundant fossil fuel. But the dominance of fossil fuel in the global energy mix is just a tiny “pip” in the course of human history.