Sustainability 104

Sustainability 104

Thursday, May 01, 2014

Sustainability Quiz 2?

Time for another quiz.  You are beginning to slack off.  You need to be reenergized with a quiz that you can’t possibly flunk.

1. How much verified reserve oil is currently in the Unites States?

ü If you get your number from an internet report, what is the date of the report.

ü If you invent a silly guess number just to see where this might be going, invent a date.

ü Watch out for lookup number scales: M means thousands on a Latin scale; MM means millions on a Latin scale; I use SI units where M (Mega) means millions, G (Giga) means billions, and T (Terra) means trillions.  Most reports use Latin scales: tricky devils aren’t they?  If you get confused as an engineering, math, or science major.  Shoot for a number in barrels (bbl), and Oh, btw, barrel size isn’t standardized worldwide.  Aren’t you glad this isn’t a real test?

ü Here is a hint.  I found 26.8 G-bbl of oil in a 2012 report.  What did you find?  Did you get a better date or number?  What might have caused that?

2. How much undiscovered oil is currently in the Unites States?

ü No, I’m not a fruit cake, there really is such a thing.  It was discovered by seismic echos, compared to know production formations, and given a probability of success from the comparison.  Slick, huh?  These oil men are sneaky.

ü The same rules apply.  Invent a number if you want too.  Watch out for scale sizes.  Get help if you need it.

ü Here is a hint.  The biggest number I could find was 134.0 G-bbl of oil in a 2012 report.  That is a serious lot of oil folks.

3. How much oil is currently in production in the Unites States?

ü I found 7 M-bbl per day.  Here is where it gets really tricky.  The lookup number was 7 MMbbl (millions, remember, Latin?).  My M means Mega, that’s millions too (SI).  But it’s per day, so we have to multiply by 365.25 days in the average year.  Who wants to do this stuff in days?  What did you come up with?  I came up with 2,557 M-bbl per day, give or take.  That’s the same as 2.557 G-bbl per day, close enough.

ü If you got a seriously bigger number, what might cause that?  Take a stab at it.

4. Now divide the answer for question 1 by the answer for question 3.  What did you get?

ü I got 10 years.  Make sure your units are the same size when you divide.

ü This is the minimum number of years for oil to last.  Scary ain’t it?

ü But wait!  My report was made in 2012, this is 2014.  I’ve got to subtract the two years that are already gone.  That’s 8 years left.  What did you get?

5. Look at question 2 again.  What do you think the odds are for finding all that undiscovered oil?  Multiply that number by the answer for question 2.

ü I’m an optimist.  I used 100%.  Gee, I wish that were really true.  Don’t you wish that every well drilled came in like the Mary Sudik, that blew oil all the way from OKC’s south side to Norman.  Oh well, back to reality.

ü Still 134.0 G-bbl of oil at 100%.

6. Now divide the answer for question 5 by the answer for question 3.  What did you get?

ü I got 53 years.

ü Add that to the final answer in question 4.  Hmm…  8 + 53 = 61 years.

ü This is the maximum number of years for oil to last.  As Porky Pig used to say at the end of the kids cartoons, "Yuk.  Yuk.  That’s all there is folks."

ü I don’t care if you got 80 and 5,300.  This is science folks, not advertising or politics.  It would be nice if one of us got the right answer though.  Then we could come up with a plan.

7. Here is a hardball question.  How long will that oil last if we speed up production and become the world’s largest producer of oil?

8. Want another one?  What would we have to do to make that oil last forever?

9. Last question.  It’s your move.  What is your move?