The financial times of London is reporting the results of a global survey of oil reserves
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7525f1dc-41d6-11e6-9b66-0712b3873ae1.html
The report estimates the world’s oil reserves at 2.1 trillion barrels, which is 70 years of production at current levels. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter stated as a fact that the world would run out of oil by 1990.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-energy/
There will never be a “last barrel of oil”. If oil supplies slow down and go up in price, new and more effective techniques will be developed. Horizontal hydraulic fracking is still a relatively new tech, discovered by accident. As drillers use the technique, they learn ways to change the mixture of chemicals and drilling patterns to increase yields. As the price goes up, substitution will occur – natural gas has almost completely replaced oil in electricity generation in. The United States.
In the long run, oil is more valuable as petrochemicals to make plastics and fertilizer rather than powering cars, but market forces will sort that out if governments just stop trying to steer the boat.
Refiners use of oil to produce jet fuel. In Q1 2016, the average price of jet fuel was almost $1 per gallon.
Fortunately, the Air Force has already identified that the “last barrel of oil” is nigh and lined up an alternate supplier. In 2014 they started purchasing jet fuel made from algae.
The good news is that they paid only $150.00 per gallon. The bad news is that they bought it with your money.
Borrowed from Saudi Arabia
With that kind of markup, you better be guarding the algae 24/7 to be sure no one dilutes their golden jet fuel with the real thing – any time you can fill a 10 gallon gas can for $10 and resell it for $1500 by slapping a label on it “made from algae”, you can bet the they got something like a 50/50 mix and don’t know it. 😉
Is algae jet fuel considered organic? It’s Gluten free, I’m thinking.
No pesticides – it’s organic. Some, however, is toxic 🙂
It’s organic in the biological sense. Probably green too. 😉
Do you think jet fuel could be made from mushrooms?
I like saying things that are completely logical in context, but absurd when the NSA algorithms try to parse them.