Power Hungry (13 page)

Sources
: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2009,
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2008/STAGING/local_assets/2009_downloads/renewables_section_2009.pdf
; Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook (data retrieved via Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_
(PPP).

If Oil Didn't Exist, We'd Have to Invent It

A
MIDST ALL THE RHETORIC about the evils of oil, the evils of OPEC, the claims that we are “addicted” to oil, that oil fosters terrorism, that we can “win the oil endgame,” or that oil is killing the planet, the simple, unavoidable truth is that using oil makes us rich. In fact, if oil didn't exist, we'd have to invent it.

Of course, many people would argue that point, but there's simply no denying that as oil consumption increases, so does prosperity. And the correlation is so clear as to be undeniable. In mid-2009, the International Energy Agency published the graph reproduced in
Figure 8
, which shows oil demand per capita for the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) versus the rest of the world. In the countries where oil demand is more than 12 barrels per capita per year, GDP is at least two times as high as those where oil demand is 6 barrels or lower.

None of that is to discount the myriad problems that oil creates. The cofounder of OPEC, Venezuela's Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, famously called oil “the devil's excrement.”
¹
The pursuit of oil and the riches that come with it have ruined countries and created generational corruption that persists to this day. Average residents of countries such as Nigeria and Angola, both of which sit atop massive deposits of oil and gas, have gained little from the exploitation of the mineral wealth beneath their
feet. Frequent wars sprout in the Middle East as various countries vie to control the flow of oil from the region, with the Second Iraq War being the most recent example, and it has become one of the most militarized areas on the planet.

Source
: David Fyfe, “Medium-Term Oil Market Report, 2009,” supporting slides, International Energy Agency, June 29, 2009,
http://www.iea.org/textbase/speech/2009/Fyfe_mtomr2009_launch.pdf
, 6.

And yet, for all of the problems that oil creates, it also provides us with unprecedented mobility, comfort, and convenience. Although we think of oil primarily as a transportation fuel, it's also a nearly perfect fuel for heating, can be used to generate electricity, and, when refined, can be turned into an array of products, from cosmetics to shoelaces and bowling balls to milk jugs.

In short, oil may be the single most flexible substance ever discovered. The consumption of oil has so radically changed human society over the course of the past century that this entire book could be focused on that one topic. More than any other substance, oil helped to shrink the world. Indeed, thanks to its high energy density, oil is a nearly perfect fuel for use in all types of vehicles, from boats and planes to cars and
motorcycles. Whether measured by weight or by volume, refined oil products provide more energy than practically any other commonly available substance, and they provide it in a form that's easy to handle, relatively cheap, and relatively clean.
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Furthermore, oil provides the fuel for the two prime movers that have done more for the cause of globalization than any other: the diesel engine and the jet turbine.

That is not to downplay the significance of gasoline-fueled engines, which have brought mobility and useful power of all types (generators, motorcycles, weed whackers, and so on) to hundreds of millions of people. But since World War II, the diesel engine and the jet turbine have fundamentally changed the world. Since their use became widespread in the 1950s and 1960s, those two prime movers have had a greater impact on the global economy than any corporate marketing effort or international trade agreement.

A decade ago, a colorful railroad lawyer named Don Cheatham told me something that stuck in my head: “Without transportation” he declared, “there is no commerce.” Cheatham's point is clearly true. But it leads to a corollary point, which perhaps can be called Bryce's Hypothesis: If it is true that without transportation there is no commerce, then without oil there is no commerce. Proving Bryce's Hypothesis is not overly difficult. The global transportation system depends almost exclusively on oil. No other substance provides such high energy density with such incredible versatility.

The diesel engine and the jet turbine effectively reduced the size of the Earth. By offering greater reliability and range than engines powered by gasoline, they cut the amount of time required to traverse the distances between countries and thereby fostered unprecedented volumes of trade. Thanks to the characteristics of the fuels they use and their more efficient use of heat energy, diesel engines and jet turbines offer about 12 percent more range than comparable gasoline-fueled engines, and they do it with greater reliability.
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The pivotal role of diesel engines and jet turbines in the global economy underscores the essentiality of oil. Why? The fuels that drive those machines cannot be effectively replaced. A number of alternatives can be used to substitute for gasoline in the light-duty vehicle market, including electricity, natural gas, and ethanol, but none of those alternatives can be
used to substitute for diesel fuel or jet fuel. Airlines are not going to be flying Boeing 737s from Tulsa to Tacoma by filling them with compressed natural gas or huge banks of batteries. Container ships that ferry consumer goods from Singapore to Rotterdam don't run on corn ethanol.

Of course, there is growing interest in biodiesel made from soybeans and artificial jet fuel made from various substances. But none of those alternatives can provide anything close to the scale of production that would be needed to keep the world's fleet of diesel engines and jet turbines on the move. For instance, even if the United States converted all of the soybeans it produces in an average year into biodiesel, doing so would provide less than 10 percent of America's total diesel-fuel needs.
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Now suppose an inventor found a way to convert soybeans into jet fuel. Even with that invention, the conversion of all of America's yearly soybean production into jet fuel would only provide about 20 percent of U.S. jet-fuel demand.
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When it comes to the global commercial transportation market, there simply is no substitute for oil. The centrality of diesel engines—and the diesel fuel needed to power them—can be demonstrated by this one fact: Ninety-four percent of the goods shipped in the United States are transported on diesel-powered vehicles.
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The same percentage likely holds true for goods shipped internationally. Sony and Samsung may be producing fancy big-screen televisions for sale at the nearest Costco, but those TVs would likely still be in China or somewhere else in the Far East if there were no giant diesel engines to propel the container ships that bring those TVs to the United States.

While diesels are driving surface-based trade, jet turbines (and thus, jet fuel) have made global air travel into a routine experience. Six decades ago, passenger airliners relied heavily on piston-driven engines that used high-octane gasoline, but by the mid-1960s, the era of piston-driven engines gave way to the jet age. Jet aircraft became dominant because they can fly about three times as fast and two times as high as their gasoline-powered cousins. That means that passengers can save huge amounts of time and do so while flying in the upper reaches of the troposphere, which is usually above the levels where weather and air turbulence can present a problem.
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The astounding success of the jet turbine can be seen by the growth in air travel. In 1950, the total volume of air travel—
measured in passenger-kilometers—was 28 billion. By 2005, that quantity of air travel had increased to some 3.7 trillion—a 130-fold increase.
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