Resource+Depletion+-+Peak+Oil


 * Resource Depletion- Peak Oil**

Resource Depletion refers to the exhaustion of raw materials within a region. Resources are commonly divided between renewable resources; such as wind power, solar energy and geothermal; and non-renewable resources ; such as oil, coal, and natural gas. Exploiting any resource, renewable or non-renewable, beyond its rate of replacement is considered to be resource depletion.

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. The production rate from a traditional [|oil field] over time usually grows exponentially until the rate peaks, after which production then declines until the field is depleted, or economically nonviable. The concept of peak oil asserts that this same trend, or bell curve, will eventually occur at a global scale.

//Figure 1: Maximum Oil Production in the United States//

US oil production entered a decline in the early 1970s, and has been declining fairly steadily ever since, as shown in Figure One. This is due to the depletion of oil reserves in the United States. It is likely that all of the major American reserves have been discovered, and due to the combination of the increasing depletion of known reserves with no new reserves being discovered, production has also peaked. This is the direction that oil fields all over the world are headed.

//Figure 2: The Peak of Worldwide Oil Production//

The aggregate depletion of oil reserves around the world, due to ever-increasing levels of [|oil consumption], is what will lead to oil production peaking worldwide; as the resources available within individual oil fields are depleted, global production rates will begin to level off. The point at which global production rates begin to decline is peak oil. Predictions of the timing of peak oil include the possibilities that it has recently occurred, that it will occur shortly, or that a plateau of oil production, due to the discovery of new reserves or advances in extraction technology, will sustain supply for up to 100 years. None of these predictions dispute the peaking of oil production, but disagree only on when it will occur.