Nevertheless, BP is cautious in defining oil reserves. At the top of an introductory web page on the subject, the company states baldly: “Nobody knows or can know how much oil exists under the earth's surface or how much it will be possible to produce in the future.”
And while the amount of proven oil reserves, and their extraction, are rising each year, so is concernabout how their recovery. Not only do new extraction methods use huge amounts of energy to get even more energy, particularly from shale, they also use chemicals and metals that many fear poison nearby soil and groundwater, and generate huge amounts of toxic wastewater.OilPrice
BP’s Latest Estimate Says World’s Oil Will Last 53.3 Years
Andy Tully
