4 ms·

I'm skeptical that this "water more valuable than oil" prediction will come to pass. Currently, a thousand gallons of freshwater from a desalination plant cos

I'm skeptical that this "water more valuable than oil" prediction will come to pass. Currently, a thousand gallons of freshwater from a desalination plant costs between $2.50 to $5 to the end consumer in the US. By contrast, a thousand gallons of West Texas Intermediate crude oil costs around $2500. And oil is becoming more scarce as we burn through it. https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-05-15/desalination-expensive-energy-hog-improvements-are-way https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-05-15/desalination-expensiv...

freehunter 8y ago
I would agree. Oil only exists in certain locations and is extremely difficult to get, so it necessarily has to be extracted by corporations and shipped around the world. Water, on the other hand, covers a lot of the surface of the planet, and even if you're not standing by a lake or river almost anyone can dig straight down and with an hour or so of work you're likely to find water. The places where this is not true are fairly rare, and the easier solution is to move the people to where water is instead of moving water to where people are. Filtering water to be drinkable is just so much easier than getting crude oil out of the ground. And worst case scenario, even if you have to move water from one place to another because the best farmland doesn't have water, basically anyone with a tanker truck and a hose can supply water pretty cheap. There's just not enough barriers to entry in the water business. The only way I see water becoming more valuable than oil is if oil demand falls so far that it's practically worthless.
analog31 8y ago
Perhaps a different way of looking at it, is to consider the cost relative to how much we use. For instance, I use one or two gallons of water every time I flush the toilet, and I could certainly look up my water bill to see how much I use overall. But I rarely go through a gallon of gasoline per day in my car. The main cost of water is probably energy, so the two are probably tied together. Water is less dense in energy terms, thus harder to transport if it can't be obtained locally. This makes me think that depleting local water sources will have more of an effect on geographic distribution of populations, than oil.
shalmanese 8y ago
The assertion was never that water would become more valuable than oil on a per gallon basis, but on an aggregate basis.

freehunter 8y ago

I would agree. Oil only exists in certain locations and is extremely difficult to get, so it necessarily has to be extracted by corporations and shipped around the world. Water, on the other hand, covers a lot of the surface of the planet, and even if you're not standing by a lake or river almost anyone can dig straight down and with an hour or so of work you're likely to find water. The places where this is not true are fairly rare, and the easier solution is to move the people to where water is instead of moving water to where people are. Filtering water to be drinkable is just so much easier than getting crude oil out of the ground. And worst case scenario, even if you have to move water from one place to another because the best farmland doesn't have water, basically anyone with a tanker truck and a hose can supply water pretty cheap. There's just not enough barriers to entry in the water business. The only way I see water becoming more valuable than oil is if oil demand falls so far that it's practically worthless.

analog31 8y ago

Perhaps a different way of looking at it, is to consider the cost relative to how much we use. For instance, I use one or two gallons of water every time I flush the toilet, and I could certainly look up my water bill to see how much I use overall. But I rarely go through a gallon of gasoline per day in my car. The main cost of water is probably energy, so the two are probably tied together. Water is less dense in energy terms, thus harder to transport if it can't be obtained locally. This makes me think that depleting local water sources will have more of an effect on geographic distribution of populations, than oil.

shalmanese 8y ago

The assertion was never that water would become more valuable than oil on a per gallon basis, but on an aggregate basis.