World's Oil Supply is Running Out Faster Than Thought, Warns Chief IEA Economist

Thursday, May 06, 2010 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: oil supply, world economy, health news

(NaturalNews) The chief economist of the International Energy Agency has warned that the world's oil supplies are running out far faster than previously predicted, which could "strangle" efforts toward economic recovery.

"[Oil] will be especially important because the global economy will still be very fragile, very vulnerable," Fatih Barol said. "Many people think there will be a recovery in a few years' time, but it will be a slow recovery and a fragile recovery and we will have the risk that the recovery will be strangled with higher oil prices."

According to the most recent estimates, based on detailed assessments of more than 800 fields containing more than 75 percent of the world's oil supply, production has already peaked in most of the largest fields. In addition, oil production is declining twice as fast as the rate predicted just two years ago. At these rates, Barol said, production is likely to peak by about 2019, a decade or more earlier than previously expected.

"One day we will run out of oil ... and we have to leave oil before oil leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day," Birol said. "The earlier we start, the better, because all of our economic and social system is based on oil, so to change from that will take a lot of time and a lot of money and we should take this issue very seriously."

The entire modern economy is based on oil, not just the transportation and military sectors. Oil is critical to the production of most drugs and chemicals; even modern food production depends upon petroleum. In the United States, it takes six barrels of oil to raise a single cow for slaughter.

The effects of waning oil are likely to be far-reaching. Birol warned that the political influence of oil-exporting countries will only increase, while environmentalists fear that energy companies will increasingly turn to dirtier and dirtier fossil fuel sources to compensate for the decline of cheap oil -- thereby accelerating the pace of global warming.

Sources for this story include: www.independent.co.uk.