How much oil do we have left on planet earth to run our automobiles?

Yes, I read somewhere that we only have around 50 more years until we run out. It didn't really bother me at the time, so I didn't search up any information about it.

My guess is, sometime in the next 50 years there will be a new discovery to run our automobiles and oil will no longer be needed.

Difficult question to answer, there is probably a great deal of oil out there, theoretically all of the continental shelves all around the Atlantic have the right conditions to make oil traps, Hence oil has turned up in the North Sea, Nigeria, Brazil, the Caribbean etc. Globally there is likely to be sizable amounts, we don't really know.

The problem is the cost of extraction, new innovations such as tension leg platforms and sub surface installations have helped. However, oil companies can only exploit these reserves when the oil price is high, otherwise it isn't worth the investment. All of this pushes the price of oil in one direction- up.

It is probably time we started thinking about trying to replicate the process of oil synthesis more efficiently. "Biofuels" as is, tend to compete with food production, using more marginal land or other concepts such as algae might work better.

Within 25 years oil will be far too valuable and costly, so as to power automobiles. Cars will largely be run off Natural Gas or Electrical fueled by Natural Gas. The source that I trust the most places Peak Oil in 2035-2045. Oil will be very expensive 10 years before then!

It all depends on how much effort we put into conserving and efficiently using what we do produce and how other methods are brought online to produce oil and gas.

It doesn't necessarily take millions of years to create oil. We have the technology today to convert the billions of tons of waste and garbage we produce every year directly into oil....enough to meet all of our needs.

The world may be running out of cheap oil...the so-called low hanging fruit....but there are also other means to create oil....from garbage and waste products...which could potentially provide enough oil to cover all of our needs and then some and at fairly low prices which would alter any predictions of when "Peak" oil production will occur although predictions of oil produced from the ground may peak at some point.

The US is the largest consumer of oil in the world and currently uses around 7.5 billion barrels per year. According to figures from this video, the TDP process of converting garbage and waste products into oil could produce enough oil to meet all of our needs....and fairly cheaply as well as cleaning up the environment. This process is also not limited to garbage but can utilize any carbon-based materials such as fast growing crops or junk crops, the millions of tires we dispose of every year, sewage sludge, etc.... And developing countries like China or India could use it as well reducing their dependance on oil imports.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWf9nYbm3ac

There's also some evidence which suggests that some oil found in the earth is abiotic in nature...that is formed by natural processes deep within the earth and might be found in abundance albeit at much lower depths which makes it more expensive to extract. And there's also tar sands and oil shales which are abundant but more expensive and more polluting to extract and process. In addition to that, biofuels created from algae may offer potentially large amounts of oil which can be created through renewable processes And methane hydrates found on the ocean floors reportedly contain twice as much energy as all of the other fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas combined.

"The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth."

http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/ti...

The bottom line is that oil and other fuels are sustainable if proper methods are employed and may be higher priced in the future but we should also be more involved in other forms of renewable energy sources such as biofuels from algae and developing vehicles which get much better fuel economy so that we don't waste what we are using and limit pollution. If we double or triple the average fleet fuel economy as opposed to what it is today, we can have twice as many vehicles without using more oil which impacts peak oil predictions.

The gasoline engines we've used in the last 100 years have been horribly wasteful and are only perhaps 30 percent efficient...70 percent of the energy produced is lost as heat in the cooling system or out the tailpipe. Porsche unveiled the recent 918 Spyder hybrid model prototype which reportedly gets 78 MPG and produces 500 HP. The Opel Eco-speedster concept car uses a four cylinder turbo-charged engine and gets 113 MPG.

Hybrid technology can be the future of fuel efficient vehicles but we also have to be concerned with limited amounts of lithium used to produce batteries for such hybrids..Bolivia has half of the world's supply of lithium so we may trade dependance on oil for dependance on lithium.

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/03/01/porsche-918-spy...

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/the-opel-e...

Abiotic oil links.......

http://321energy.com/editorials/engdahl/engdahl092...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/09091...

http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/03/rocks-into-gas....

http://www.gasresources.net/energy_resources.htm

Biofuels from algae.......

http://www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/1d6-7d9...

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/exxon-bets...