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You're mistakenly assuming that our only use for oil is energy production. Oil has many uses besides as an energy source. Even in transportation, oil is still

You're mistakenly assuming that our only use for oil is energy production. Oil has many uses besides as an energy source. Even in transportation, oil is still useful as an energy transfer system even if it isn't an energy source. Net-loss energy systems are very useful. Fuel cells and batteries fall into this category. The latter has already begun to function as a replacement good for oil in the automotive industry.

BoiledCabbage 7y ago
While yes we can use oil for other purposes, the vast majority of use of oil is for net positive energy use. If oil were net negative the majority of it's demand would disappear.
- throwaway373438 7y ago
  Well sure, because it's cheap and available! The point here is that when price points change replacement good emerge causing us to never actually run out of the good in question. This process of substitution is a cornerstone of cornucopian theory, as described by the famous Simon-Ehrlich wager. It's not clear demand would evaporate, by the way. Right now we produce oil at a variety of price points - from cheap light crude at a few dollars per bbl to shale oil at ranges from $30-90/bbl. Most folks expect electric cars to undercut oil at higher price points. It's certainly possible we might some day develop technology to obsolete even oil at light crude extraction prices. But it's also possible that we would opt to produce petrol products in a net-negative energy process because petrol is just so damned convenient for energy transportation. In a sense we already have, as Fischer-Tropsch can produce at around $40/bbl. We see it used today in special cases such as on aircraft carriers to work around logistical complexity. Producing jet fuel from seawater is very handy, if costly in terms of energy consumption. Oil and oil products are very much renewable. The price points relative to substitution tech will change over time and some day we likely will decide that oil just isn't attractive anymore. Above, I suggested this might happen before we run out of light sweet crude (mostly from Saudi). I think this is a very reasonable thing to wonder.

BoiledCabbage 7y ago

While yes we can use oil for other purposes, the vast majority of use of oil is for net positive energy use. If oil were net negative the majority of it's demand would disappear.

throwaway373438 7y ago
Well sure, because it's cheap and available! The point here is that when price points change replacement good emerge causing us to never actually run out of the good in question. This process of substitution is a cornerstone of cornucopian theory, as described by the famous Simon-Ehrlich wager. It's not clear demand would evaporate, by the way. Right now we produce oil at a variety of price points - from cheap light crude at a few dollars per bbl to shale oil at ranges from $30-90/bbl. Most folks expect electric cars to undercut oil at higher price points. It's certainly possible we might some day develop technology to obsolete even oil at light crude extraction prices. But it's also possible that we would opt to produce petrol products in a net-negative energy process because petrol is just so damned convenient for energy transportation. In a sense we already have, as Fischer-Tropsch can produce at around $40/bbl. We see it used today in special cases such as on aircraft carriers to work around logistical complexity. Producing jet fuel from seawater is very handy, if costly in terms of energy consumption. Oil and oil products are very much renewable. The price points relative to substitution tech will change over time and some day we likely will decide that oil just isn't attractive anymore. Above, I suggested this might happen before we run out of light sweet crude (mostly from Saudi). I think this is a very reasonable thing to wonder.