Fact or Fiction?
8
The world is running out of oil
False.In recent years, supply disruptions from hurricanes, political instability in oil-rich countries like Libya and threats posed by nations such as Iran have threatened the immediate global oil supply. And as recently as 2008, many experts believed that on a more fundamental level, the world was running out of oil due to diminishing supplies and a sharp increase in demand by countries like China and India. However, the discovery of new reserves, and the development of new technology to access those reserves, has countered that notion that the world – and the U.S. in particular – is running out of oil.
“There is much greater confidence in oil supplies than in 2008,” said Daniel Yergin, Pulitzer Prize winning author and chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, in a 2012 testimony before the U.S. Senate Energy Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “East Africa is emerging as a major new oil and gas play. Ghana is joining the ranks of exporters. Major new discoveries have been found off the coast of French Guyana in Latin America.”
The shale oil boom in the U.S. has pushed production up almost 20 percent since 2008. In Canada, with the development of the oil sands, production has nearly tripled since the beginning of the 21st century. “Today the output from the oil sands – 1.7 million barrels per day – is greater than Libya was producing before its civil war,” Yergin testified.
- By Elizabeth Bunn