Planning for the end of oil

Richard Sears is a geophysicist who was previously vice president for exploration and deep water technical evaluation at Shell.  He is currently associated with MIT.  Sears believes that there are between 30 and 50 years left before a broad gap opens between worldwide oil supply and demand.

Sears recently spoke at a TED conference in Long Beach, California.  He held up a small pincushion of the globe, with red thumbtacks stuck in it.  Each thumbtack represented an oil basin - - the world of oil as we know it.  All 650 billion barrels of remaining oil - - in many places controlled and populated by RAVS (Russians, Arabs, and Villains that Smoke).  In the last decade, 43 percent of the industry's new reserves have come from deep water - - the future may be in places off the coast of Africa at drilling depths of 35,000 feet with test holes coming in at $100 million.

Sears doesn't see a world where we run out of oil - - technology and innovation will allow us to "de-carbonize", a process according to Sears that has been underway for sometime.  Like Sears said in his talk -- the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones.