ALL predictions about the world
having sufficient oil stocks for the next
30 years may have been a lot of wishful
thinking after all. A recent report from
the World Resources Institute (WRI)
based in Washington DC, says
that oil supplies could start
drying up as early as 2007 AD,
According to James Mac-
Kenzie of the WRI, nearly 40
studies have put the world's
reserves of 'ultimately recoverable' oil at between 1,800 and
2,300 billion barrels. Of that,
the world has already consumed 765
billion barrels so far.
These predictions might set the
alarm bells ringing for governments
which are doing little to prepare for the
economic fallout of this eventuality,
because oil prices are low. But as oil
becomes sparser, the increasing cost and
difficulty of extraction could lead to a
decline in the rate of production sometime between 2007
and 2014 AD. Many of the
claims on reserves made by oil-
producing nations were not
reliable, said MacKenzie. Even
if the oil stocks exist as they
claim, they will defer the fall in
supply by a decade only.
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