Everyone has seen a steel drum. If you make an oil pipeline by stacking 55 gallon drums end to end representing the world's 2008 daily demand for oil, how long would it be and how fast would the oil have to flow to cover its length in a 24 hour period?
- 42 gallons equals one oil barrel
- A 55 gallon steel drum is 3 feet tall by 22 inches wide
- A mile is 5,280 feet
- The circumference of the earth is 24,901 miles
- Speed of sound 768 mph
Using these above numbers let’s do some math:
Take the 85,000,000 bbl of oil & times it by 42 gal in a barrel to equal 3,570,000,000 total gallons of oil used everyday.
Divide those total gallons by 55 gallon steel drums: 3,570,000,000 gal / 55 gal steel drum = 64,909,090 drums of oil consumed each day.
At 3 feet tall it takes 1,760 drums laid end-to-end to build a pipeline one mile long: 5280’/3’ = 1,760 drums.
Daily consumption of oil in drums divided by the number of drums in a mile: 64,909,090 drums/1,760 drums in a mile = a 36,880 mile long pipeline worth of drums being consumed every day.
Circumference of the earth is 24,901 miles.
At 85,000,000 barrels per day, in one year’s worth of consumption enough oil drums could be filled to make the trip around the world 540 times: (36,880 miles * 365 days)/24,901 miles = 540.
36,880 miles / 24 hours in a day = 1,537 miles each drum volume of oil would need to travel every hour to cover the 36,880 mile distance in a 24 hour period. 1,537 miles / 768 mph speed of sound = 2 or twice the speed of sound.
The distance from Los Angeles to New York is 2,462 miles (http://www.laalmanac.com/transport/tr53.htm). At mach 2 speeds each drum volume flowing through this pipe would travel the distance in 1 hour 35 minutes.
To summarize: at 85,000,000 barrels worth of daily oil consumption you could build a pipeline using steel drums 36,880 miles long (or approximately 1.5 times the circumference of the earth), and since you’d be replacing this pipeline’s volume every day the oil flowing through it would need to traveling at two times the speed of sound! And in one year's worth of production you could use enough 55 gallon drums to encircle the earth 540 times!
The Condensed version for the above math.
This would fit on a note card:
(85,000,000bbl x 42gal) / 55gal = 64,909,090 fifty-five gallon steel drums
(64,9090,090 x 3ft) / 5280ft = 36,880 mile long pipeline
36,880 / 24,901 = 1.48 or a pipeline stretching 1 1/2 times around the earth....every day 24/7
(36,880 / 24hr) / 768mph = Mach 2 or twice the speed of sound the oil would need to flow to replace the 85 million barrels being consumed every day.
(36,880 x 365days) / 24,901miles = 540 times you could encircle the earth every year with steel drums.
Will the world be able to replace even half that volume using bio fuels?
The IEA’s World Energy Outlook Report 2008 basically states the world oil industry needs to average bring on line the equivalent of a new Saudi Arabia every 5 years just to offset annual decline rates on existing oilfields. However, according to the IEA to meet increasing demands from developing countries such as China and India the industry needs to average a new Saudi Arabia evey 3.5 years between the years 2007 and 2030:
http://oildepletiondebate.blogspot.com/2008/11/iea-world-energy-outlook-2008.html
As National Geographic magazine put it: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/03/energy-challenge/mckibben-text
"The Energy Information Administration, an arm of the U.S. government, forecast last year that, all things being equal, world energy consumption would increase 50 percent by 2030. That's a good round number, summing up the desire of people across the world for refrigerators, televisions, ice cubes, hamburgers, motorbikes, and maybe even a little air-conditioning in the tropics.
But it's not at all clear where that energy can come from, because we happen to be alive at the moment when the oil is starting to run out. In November 2008 the International Energy Agency estimated that production from the world's mature oil fields was declining 6.7 percent a year, a rate that is expected to get even worse over time. Offsetting this decline will require finding a new Kuwait's worth of output every year, or somehow squeezing that much more from existing fields. Many observers think we've already passed the peak of oil production. An optimist in this world is someone who thinks it might still be a matter of years. But there's little question where the future lies, which is why the cost of a barrel of oil spiked to $147 last year. It took the prospect of a Great Recession to bring it back down to $40. Curbing high gas prices with recurrent economic slumps is probably not the smartest of remedies."
The US uses ¼ of the world’s demand for oil, or approximately 20-22 million barrels per day. Of those 20 million barrels, we produce 5 million domestically and import 15 million barrels. Our highway transportation fleet consumes 10 million barrels in oil for fuel usage every day. In other words, ban all highway transportation, close all filling stations - basically, vacate the roadways with all internal combustion engines, and you would still have to import 5 million barrels into the US (half its demand) to supply the 10 million being consumed elsewhere by the US economy.
Every presidential campaign candidates make promises of getting the US off imported oil while keeping the economy growing and prospering. Is that goal possible?
Mexico is the #3 import supplier into the US. However, Mexico’s key oilfield, Cantrell, is declining at an annualized rate of 35% http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersComService_3_MOLT/idUSTRE55F4HK20090616.
If Mexico's decline continues, geologist Jeffry Brown projects Mexico will become a net oil importer within 5 years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Land_Model. If so, what country, or source of oil, will the US look to for replacing the oil imports now coming from Mexico?
