What.If … There Was No More Oil (A What.If video)


In this video, the posited question is what if there was no more oil?  What would happen if the world ran out of oil?  Well, here’s some good news.  The world will NEVER run out of oil.  However, the concept of peak oil is very real, as are the end of the world as we know it type consequences that would certainly follow on from peak oil.  The threat of terrorism that would create a “manufactured” peak oil scenario is also very real.  If there were an attack that took millions of barrels of oil out of the global market, due to supply interruption like a sunken tanker in the Strait of Hormuz (shorter term), or due to a disruption in production like an attack on the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia (very long term), or on US refining capabilities (very long term), an $8 overnight price jump would be the least of our worries. At that point, the real question would be how long the hyper-complex systems that make the ‘American way of life’ possible could hold together before the whole thing came spinning apart and we were facing an actual cascading collapse scenario…failure of the just in time delivery system, failure of the municipal water treatment plants, economic collapse due to a crashing stock market, depression due to job lay offs and business closures, failure of the electric grid due to a collapse of coal deliveries, disintegration of the mega farms due to a lack of fuel to run the large machinery and a halt in feed deliveries. I could go on. Depending on the type of interruption of the liquid fuel supplies, it could very well mean ‘game over’ for our complex society. This is an absolutely, clear and present threat for every one of us that enjoys our current way of life.  With all of that in mind, here is What.If’s look at what that world without access to oil might look like.  Enjoy.


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