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Peak Oil Change The World Essay

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How Will Peak Oil Change The World?
Peak oil is one of the world’s largest problems but it is one that many do not even know about. Oil is used by nearly everyone just about everywhere in the world. So what if the supply of oil began to diminish? That’s exactly what peak oil is. When an oil well is created, those that are extracting the oil will begin to extract more and more until the amount of oil produced peaks. Once the oil well peaks, those that are extracting the oil will begin to slowly obtain less and less oil over the years. Running out of oil in the world is not the main problem because “the existing reservoirs may not be capable of producing on a daily basis the increasing volumes of oil that the world requires because it would …show more content…

Oil production did indeed peak a year later” (DeFotis). Hubbert’s idea of peak oil soon became a more excepted idea since he was indeed right about the whole concept, especially since he was only a year off.
Unfortunately, there is a lot the world is at the point of peak oil right now and “it will take 20 years to adequately prepare society for the passing of the global oil peak” (Floegel). There is not a sure way of telling if the world has peaked or not but there are major consequences. Over the years, just about every region in the world has peaked besides the Middle East and “of the 65 largest oil producing countries in the world, up to 54 have passed their peak of production and are now in decline, including the United States in 1970, Indonesia in 1997, Australia in 2000, the UK in 1999, Norway in 2001, and Mexico in 2004” (Peak Oil Primer). With this in mind, how much of a decline will there be in the future? A decline of “10% or more would soon implode the global economy but most models project decline rates of 2-4%”(Peak Oil Primer). According to BP’s data for 2010, during the United States Peak in 1970, 11.3 million barrels were produced a day. Now the United States produces around 7.5 million barrels a day and imports 11.4 million barrels. This is a great example of how serious of an issue peak oil is because the United States is now importing more oil than they have ever produced. Russia however peaked in 1987 with 11.5 million barrels a day but could peak

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