I saw this story on The Oil Drum last week and found it very disturbing. The story is entitled “The 88,000,000,000 barrel debt”. They use some very simple graphs to illustrate this powerful message. I highly recommend clicking on this link so you can see the graphs.
The first graph shows how US Energy Production has been almost constant for the past 30 years. The second graph illustrates how our Energy Consumption has grown over that same period of time. In the third and final graph, they show the ever rising debt.
So while the US Oil Production has declined over the years, we have compensated by producing more coal and natural gas. Even with these changes, we have still consumed well beyond our capacity. After studying the numbers, I put together this chart:
| Barrels | Average | ||
| Number | of Oil | Per Year | |
| of Years | (in Billions) | (in Billions) | |
| 1981-1993 | 12 | 22 | 1.83 |
| 1993-1999 | 6 | 44 | 3.67 |
| 1999-2004 | 5 | 66 | 4.40 |
| 2004-2008 | 4 | 88 | 5.50 |
Do you see a shocking pattern in these numbers? While it took us 12 years to accumulate a debt of 22 billion barrels of oil in the 80’s, we are now averaging a debt of 5.5 billion barrels a year. At this rate, we will hit 100 billion by the end of 2010. So much for Energy Independence.
I think that this just further illustrates that increased production of alternative energy will only help so much. The real answer lies in reduced consumption. Passenger Energy is one tool that could help close this huge gap between production and consumption.
