The death throes of oil in 25 years?

Present situation in USA, not everywhere. But we are talking future here.
Producing hydrogen cheaply from renewable energy is the in thing in Europe and elsewhere.
It is already a viable source of cheap energy in some parts of the world.

Here is an IEA report: https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/april/producing-industrial-hydrogen-from-renewable-energy.html

The EU Commission is studying the prospects aswell: https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/news/harnessing-full-power-renewable-energy-hydrogen

In Norway there are several projects afoot to use “mini hydro” to produce hydrogen for local consumption: https://www.ife.no/en/ife/ife_news/2016/pilotprosjekt-hydrogen-fra-smaskala-vannkraftverk

In France as a way to utilize and storing excess power on windy days: https://www.nrel.gov/continuum/energy_integration/hydrogen.html

Although too late for me to gain anything from this, it is interesting to watch the development of something I looked into years ago, but was stopped by the high cost of hydrogen then.

PS> A neighbouring shipyard is projecting a hydrogen drive ferry: https://www.sjofartsdir.no/en/news/news-from-the-nma/breaking-new-ground-in-hydrogen-ferry-project/

And a local entrepreneur is heavily into producing suitable storage solutions for hydrogen from composites.
(He already produce composite gas cylinders for the world market, incl. with manufacturing in USA: http://www.hexagon.no/)

"Despite the ever better drilling techniques finding ever more difficult reserves… there is still only so much in the ground. It will run out. "

Do we know that, actually?

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Yes, we know every resource is finite. Cheap oil is currently controlled by Middle Eastern countries who could extract it with equipment used for water well drilling in the USA at one time. I remember when you could almost dig it out with a shovel. The oil companies know better than anyone their days are numbered. It may be numbered in decades but they know. They will be the ones to bankroll what are now called “alternative” energy. The oil companies existence depends on them controlling the world’s lifeblood. Whether oil, wind , hydrogen, solar, geothermal they will do their best to corner the market of the future. They HATE solar and wind because they cannot buy Mother Nature and pay millions of dollars a year to lobbyists to oppose any development of solar or wind.

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Actually there is no such thing as a “zero emission” vehicle. Maybe technically one can claim so however how does such a vehicle get power? It must be supplied from some source. In addition there are line losses from the source. The claims by those that ignore physics do not help reality. An alternative may be fuel cells technology which has, I believe, greater efficiency than internal combustion engines. Also do these EV adherents take into account the environmental affects of EV vehicles, which is not without consequence? This subject is not as cut and dried as some would claim. There are a variety of factors involved. But claiming EVs are “totally clean” is a wholly false and deceptive claim by those that deny physics and lack, or refuse, whole system
analysis whether on purpose or shear ignorance or willful ignorance. Nothing is for free, though many seem to think or claim so. It is a low order lack of valid analysis that claims so. Real, full, analysis is required to arrive at valid, useful, conclusions. Want or desire has no validity at all. Actual physics is what matters.

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Are you serious?

A little play on words: yes, it will run out, but we will never run out of it.

The planet we live on is of finite space, and so too are all the resources on/in/under it. But we will never, ever run out of oil. What we WILL do is one of two things: either run out of relatively affordable and abundant and accessible oil (leaving vast amounts but somewhat less than half of it in the ground), at a price that allows for “bidness as usual” which destroys the economy that relies on it or, through the sheer gluttony of over-production due to short-tetm economic necessity, destroy the industry with long-term unsustainably low prices.

From within or without, from too little or too much, we are bound to wreck it somehow. No empire or civilization ever survives it’s own peak indefinitely. Resource depletion is a non-negotiable fact of physics and math. It’s only a matter of time.

What comes after oil? Nobody can say for certain. But assuming it will be an abundant-energy tech-topia is a sucker’s bet.

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tengineer1 have you read “Black Gold…” I believe it is called? It speaks of the possibility of the earth, itself, producing hydrocarbons. A subject research by Russians among others. It mentions supposedly “dry” oil wells gaining more oil and so forth. I have a question, why or how if hydro carbons come from the process of the deterioration of plant and animal life on earth is methane prevalent in “outer space”? There were no dinosaurs and plants floating around in space to create methane.

p.s. why, opposed to predictions, have we not run out of hydrocarbon supplies in the earth?

Accepted,to a point.
Think in terms of how much plastic can be gathered and actually recycled. It seems there is quite an industry already in places like India… where people live on rubbish tips and scrape a life collecting plastic bottles. But do we really want to live like that?,

I would not have confidence in recycling as a viable source of raw material.

That’s why I said that when it gets to be economical enough people will invent new ways of gathering and recycling plastics.

New technologies.