Originally Posted by
jonathan180iq
For what it's worth, at the current global consumption rate, the world's recorded oil reserves will be exhausted in 43 years.
Yeah, but it isn't that useful to look at it that way. Oil reservoirs aren't just a big underground cavern that is filled with oil. They are porous rock of one sort or another, so getting that last bit of oil is hard.
Past experience has been that once you use about half of the oil in an oilfield, the overall production drops off, and there isn't anything you can do about it. You can drill like crazy, and it helps to stem the decline somewhat, but still the overall oil production from an oilfield does decline.
This sort of rule of thumb best applies to oilfields where there haven't been artificial constraints that limited the overall production. Things like wars, production quotas, and the like.