[LUM#19] The End of Oil

[LUM Magazine] - Published on July 4, 2023 in Science and Society

While hydrocarbons have been seen as the panacea for energy for decades, the oil monopoly is now environmentally unsustainable. But will the end of this golden age be a choice made by humans, or will it be forced upon us by the depletion of oil reserves? A chronicle of a foreshadowed end with expert Michel Séranne of the Montpellier GeosciencesLaboratory *.

Take a few living marine microorganisms—animals, plants, bacteria, plankton. When they die, let them sink to the bottom of lakes or oceans, where they’ll mix with sand, forming different layers of sediment. Deprive them of oxygen and adjust the temperature and pressure. Wait several tens of millions of years. You have oil. An ancient and unchanging recipe for a timeless product.

• Watch the video from “C’est pas sorcier” that explains how oil is formed

“Oil began to be used as an energy source as early as the 19th century, but its consumption skyrocketed at the beginning of the 20th century with the invention of the automobile,” notes Michel Séranne. It must be said that, as an energy source, oil had everything going for it at the time. “It’s a fluid, so all you ‘have to do’ is run a pipe to extract it from the ground, which makes it very easy to extract compared to coal, for example,” explains the geologist.

Oil addict

Easy to extract, transport, store, and use, oil was then a very cheap energy source that offered every advantage. “So easy, in fact, that it has been used recklessly, creating a veritable addiction to fossil fuels.” In 2018, global oil consumption surpassed the 100-million-barrel-per-day threshold— that’s nearly 16 billion liters of “black gold” every day.

“We’re consuming oil much faster than it’s being created—it takes tens of millions of years to form and burns up in just a few seconds,” Michel Séranne points out. On the scale of our time, this makes it a nonrenewable energy source—and therefore a finite resource. This observation raises a recurring question: Will we eventually run out of all the available oil?

Although the end of the oil age has been predicted regularly since the 1980s, this deadline keeps getting pushed back as we get closer to it. Because there’s still oil left. “Not only are we gaining a better understanding of natural reserves and discovering new reservoirs, but there have also been major technological advances that allow us to tap into resources that were previously inaccessible. Today, we’re extracting barely one-quarter to one-third of the oil contained in the deposits.”

Untapped resources

After first depleting the most accessible reserves, we could now tap into deposits that are farther away or harder to reach. Not to mention all the known oil reserves that have not been exploited for geopolitical reasons, “such as in Venezuela, the Arctic, or Alaska. The reserves would last for more than another century, ” the geologist explains.

“In reality, the question isn’t whether there will still be oil, but rather how much we’ll be willing to pay for it. ” After all, less accessible oil fields mean higher production costs. Not to mention, of course, the environmental cost, which “will be absolutely exorbitant—an unacceptable cost,” Michel Séranne points out. A true paradigm shift surrounding the end of the oil age—one that will not simply be imposed upon us but must therefore be chosen.”

And while the need for this energy transition is now widely acknowledged, Michel Séranne does not believe it signals the end of oil: “For now, renewable energy accounts for less than 20% of total energy production, and if we want to increase that share, we need oil and gas—if only as a source of energy during this transition period. What we need to do is reduce the share of hydrocarbons as quickly as possible.”

Essentials of Geosciences

An energy transition that cannot happen without oil—or without geologists. This is especially true because the materials needed to produce renewable energy are also hidden beneath our feet, and their extraction requires a deep understanding of geological formations. “Strategic metals such as cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements, of course, but also base metals like steel, aluminum, and copper, which are essential for building wind turbines and solar panels.”

But also because the subsurface is a highly strategic location for energy storage. “Most renewable energy sources are considered intermittent, so we need to be able to store them when they’re produced so we can use them when we need them, and natural reservoirs can address these challenges, ” explains Michel Séranne. Understanding and utilizing the local subsurface is thus a major challenge for the energy transition, which cannot happen without the geosciences. “Developing research and education to make better use of it is becoming increasingly necessary to support the anticipated end of fossil fuels, ” notes Michel Séranne.

*GM (UM, CNRS, University of the Antilles)

Keywords: Energy, Geosciences, LUM#19, LumLu, LUM Magazine, Oil, Science, Company