The most interesting statistics in this entire BP report is that there are currently 54 years of oil reserves and 64 years of natural gas reserves. The true figures are much smaller as this report understates demand by huge proportions failing to reflect about 1.2 billion new cars that are going on the road by 2050, and overstating supply of shale gas and what they call tight oil. Also, it must be pointed out that if you have 54 years of oil reserves it does not mean those reserves can support even today’s world demand in the later years for the simple reason is that as you use up your reserves your ability to sustain present production based on lower reserves greatly diminishes. Let’s say today we have 400 billion barrels of light oil being used up at the rate of 80 million barrels a day or 29.2 billion barrels of oil a year. If the 400 billion barrels are reduced to a 100 billion barrels, then the maximum production from that base would be significantly less than 80 million barrels a day. Therefore, the entire report is substantially flawed.
It appears to be all the more flawed as it does not mention the 900 billion barrels of heavy oil which are producing today 10 million barrels a day or 3.65 billion barrels a year. This is way below potential production with the Genoil enabling technology that can upgrade this oil and desulfurize it. The use of the ten million barrels a day of heavy oil breaks down to 2 million barrels a day are being upgraded, and 8 million barrels a day are being burned as bunker fuel. In the next few years the world is going to face a light oil crisis as the world fleets will have to buy light oil to supply their transportation fuel as the highly sulfured heavy oil that they are burning will be outlawed. Therefore, world demand will rise 8 million barrels a day on the light oil driving the light oil price through the roof all things being equal. At this moment the heavy oil is significantly less than the price of the light oil for the ships, and it will more than double their costs as the light oil will skyrocket upward. The light oil demand cannot be met except by demand destruction through a rapidly rising price which means a world economic crisis. For example, as shipping costs skyrocket, the goods transported will begin to be priced out of world trade as the transportation costs will destroy their profitability. The theory of comparative advantage between nations will go up in smoke as the transportation costs will wipe out their profitability as world trade dramatically falls. This will result in a dramatic fall in world GDP.
The heavy oil can supply the differential but BP as the others are operating with their old mentality that the conversion of the heavy oil to light oil would destroy their profitability if the amount of oil on the market should surge forward. And certainly their fear was true in the old days. Why else would they not say a word about it in this report. It is their old fear of the heavy oil to light oil conversion glut that no longer is extant. But if the world oil producers will look into the future realistically they will see their markets destroyed by their prices being too high as their oil is priced out of the market by the surging bunker oil fuel replacement by light oil. Not only will it destroy their market but the west will face massive stagflation if not depression as world trade shrinks and the oil price rise throws hundreds of millions out of work as there is insufficient energy to power the world transportation system or sufficient at such a high cost that it will create demand destruction. This light oil price rise will adversely affect even food production driving food prices higher as the costs of petro-fertilizers astronomically rise. This can be alleviated by tapping the heavy oil supplies by using the Genoil GHU Upgrader.