World Nearing Peak Oil – Eventually Peak Water

While it is still the most economical way to fuel our energy needs as humans, fossil fuels especially crude oil is witnessing it’s peak production days. The Hubbert peak theory, which proved very accurate when applied to both US and Norwegian oil discovery and production rates, predicted that the world would reach peak production almost ten years ago. He also added a caveat which stated that if OPEC purposefully lowered it’s production, which it has done in the past, that peak production could be extended to around ten years later. Well, in a few months it will have been exactly ten years later, and thanks to technologies such as Google Earth, we now know that Saudi Arabia is in its last throes of full production capacity.

While fresh oil wells do not need water to be injected to extract oil, a secondary oil recovery method indicates that Saudi Arabia is nearing it’s peak production. Water, which is very scarce in Saudi Arabia, costs relatively little as much of the water is subsidized by the government and the Saudi government puts around 2 billion USD per year into water and irrigation. This amounts to around $80 USD per person per year in the country. Saudi Arabia drills for water just like it drills for oil, as much of it’s water supply is from non-renewable groundwater from the deep aquifers.

Pictured above is a form of secondary recovery, basically flooding the oil well around the extraction point forcing the oil to the middle. Pictured below are some Saudi farms courtesy of satellite images from Google Earth.

While the US witnessed it’s peak oil in the 1970′s, it wouldn’t be too far fetched to anticipate world peak oil along with Saudi Peak oil in the next few years. World oil consumption has been given much attention over the last thirty years, yet world water consumption has been following the same trend and has quadrupled in the last 50 years just like oil. Unlike oil, water is a renewable resource and returns every year in the form of precipitation. However, along with global warming the world’s glacier sizes are getting visibility smaller, forcing many countries to buy water from other countries. A 2006 study has predicted that the Alps glaciers will be gone by 2050 and on average about 3 percent of Alpine glacial ice is lost each year. Chacaltaya, a mountain range in Bolivia which boasted a glacier for 18,000 years, has since early 2009 been barren. Below is a photo of the mountain in 2002.

Chacaltaya

It is hard to doubt with these concrete pieces of evidence that the sources of easily obtained fresh water are fast disappearing.  Chacaltaya, which had undergone a 80% reduction in size from 1987 to 2007, used to be Bolivia’s only skiing resort. Now Bolivia has none.

Once oil is gone, much of the world will resort to burning coal for its energy needs, if left unchecked the soot and carbon emitted by these power plants will further harm the planet and its water resources.

Photo Credits

Secondary Recovery

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1357080/petroleum-production/81768/Secondary-recovery-injection-of-gas-or-water