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Petroleum
Global View
Liquid fuels made from petroleum provide nearly all the energy used to transport people and goods worldwide. These liquids, such as gasoline (petrol), diesel, and jet fuel, have a high energy density. That is, they store large amounts of energy in a small volume. They are easily carried in vehicles and can be moved from place to place through pipelines.
Burning petroleum products is the largest single cause of global warming, responsible for 40% of total carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. Emissions are projected to continue to increase, since no comparable alternative to petroleum-derived fuels is available. The potential to displace petroleum by increasing the use of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel is uncertain.
Because liquid fuels are so convenient and essential for transport, the fuels and the crude oil from which they are obtained are in high demand worldwide. Global crude oil consumption exceeds 30 billion barrels per year (1.24 trillion US gallons or 4.7 billion cubic meters.) On an energy basis, crude oil costs twice as much as natural gas and much more than coal.
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United States
Petroleum production in the US peaked around 1970 but the US remains a major producer. Nevertheless, the country imports about half of its crude oil and petroleum products.
The world’s largest deposits of petroleum are in the Persian Gulf region and in Russia. The US, Europe and much of the rest of the industrialized world is dependent on imported crude oil from these regions. Petroleum resources in all of the major exporting countries are controlled by national governments, giving rise to political posturing for “energy independence”.
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California
California consumes 9% of all the petroleum products burned in the US. Although little is used for heating buildings, the state’s notorious automobile culture ensures that consumption will remain high in the foreseeable future. Meeting the state’s new global warming reduction goals established in AB 32 will be extremely difficult in the transportation sector. Expectations for doing so appear to be based on increasing vehicle efficiencies and the use of biofuels.
Note – the chart does not include energy used to generate electricity that is imported into California from neighboring states.
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Peak Oil
There has been considerable discussion in recent years of the possibility that crude oil production will peak and begin to decline in the foreseeable future. US crude production peaked around 1970, and peak theorists believe that global production will peak for similar reasons. However, major differences exist between the US and global cases.
Declining oil production in the US was easily augmented with imports. In the absence of low cost imported oil, US prices would have risen and production would have continued to increase. There is no such alternative source of oil globally, of course, but rising prices are already resulting in the production of “unconventional” oil and oil from resource regions that could not be exploited with earlier technology.
There is disagreement among experts about the amount of oil that can ultimately be recovered for human use. Nevertheless, even the most optimistic estimates indicate that the world’s crude oil resources will be almost entirely drained in the current century.
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