Is the world running out of oil? The answer is: No, not for a long, long time. So far, we have produced only about 1 trillion of the worlds approximately 5 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, both conventional and nonconventional.
But getting at the other 8 to 10 trillion barrels of oil locked within planet Earth is going to be very, very difficult, if not impossible. Even for the 4 trillion barrels of remaining recoverable oil, we face production barriers, environmental concerns, infrastructure constraints and geopolitical complications that are truly mind-boggling.