Why Will the World Never Run Out of Oil?
This is a bit of a trick question, because right now the most urgent requirement in the world is to find alternative energy resources, as we are running out of oil. But in physical terms, the world will never ‘run out’ of oil simply because we have not the technology nor the ability to remove every last drop from the reservoirs. In most oil reservoirs, the oil is contained between the spaces of the sand grains (in a sandstone reservoir) or in the fissures and fractures in limestone reservoirs. Imagine a face sponge. It is made up of a series of tiny channels and pore spaces that allow the sponge to hold much more than its own weight of water. An oil reservoir is similar – when you get down to the microscopic level – a hard matrix of sand grains with lots of pore spaces and flow channels. If these channels get too narrow, and the sandstone is what is called ‘oil wet’, the attraction between the sandstone or limestone and the oil droplets becomes so strong that nothing will displace the
