Rocks, rock oil and peak oil

ALMOST 2,000 YEARS AGO, a Stone Age tribe made camp under a sandstone overhang in a place south of Pittsburgh now called Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, in Washington County. Theirs was a world still in glacial throes, with the edge of a mile-thick sheet of ice not far to the north. On the edge of a frozen ice desert that covered half the continent, these ancients sought protection from the bitter elements. Today, visitors to Meadowcroft can enter an open excavation and view evidence of tools and campfires made by these wandering souls so long ago.

Not quite a century and a half ago, in 1859, a man of the Iron Age named Edwin Drake made his own mark upon human history by driving down one of the world

Of course, without oil in this world something else would be here in its place. Ours might not resemble the Pleistocene existence of Meadowcroft, but neither would it be anything remotely like what we know today. Absent abundant quantities of oil cycling through the arteries of world commerce, our motorized, mechanized, industrialized world would not be here, and neither would we, I venture to guess.

The oil wells of the world produce something over 84 million barrels of petroleum every day, or about 1,000 barrels per second, and every drop is consumed in an energy-hungry world. People move about using oil, by means of train, plane, or automobile. People wear oil, in the form of synthetic fibers. People eat oil, in the form of tractor fuel, fertilizer, transport, processing, refrigeration or preservation, and cooking.

Eenrgy Bulletin