Amos -

Despite what you see on "CSI" TV programs, DNA analysis can't quite answer all questions. The molecular breakdown and reforming that takes place in production of crude petroleum would certainly eliminate any traces of identifiable DNA fragments.

Carbon dating has been applied to crude petroleum, but the period during which the crude is created and accumulated to form a "field" that can be usefully tapped appears to be extremely long. It is very difficult to separate the variations in isotope concentration due to sequestered aging (the basis for Carbon dating) from variations due to mixing of parts of a field "produced over geological time spans."

An early post in this thread quoted "knowitall authors" discussed on AM radio as asserting that:

The running-out-of-oil myth: The 1970s scientific study known as Hubbert's Peak, predicting we would exhaust oil reserves by 2003, has been proven false.

This is just one "scientific fact" quoted by these authors that demonstrates a basically "crackpot" lack of knowledge, but does offer an basis for comment on the production and depletion question.

"Hubbert's Peak" did not predict that we would "exhaust all oil reserves by 2003." (The cited "talk show authors" obviously didn't read the report, or lacked the math skills to understand it.)

Hubbert's Peak predicted that a specific moderately sized oil field would reach its peak production (the Peak) at a specific future time, and that the rate at which oil could be extracted from that specific field would thereafter decline at a predictable rate. The prediction of the time for that field to "peak" was astonishingly accurate. The prediction for the rate of decline for that particular field was a little less accurate, but still pretty good.

Hubbert's methods have been applied to a number of other specific oil fields, and have been demonstrated - in every case where they have been applied - to be quite accurate in predicting when a given field will "peak." The estimation of how rapidly production will decline after the peak remains slightly less specific, but still convincingly predicts, supported by measured data, that eventually each individual field has a finite "capacity" for producing a predictable total amount of crude oil extractable by economically viable means.

Other analysts - not Hubble - have attempted to make composite predictions for known and functioning crude oil fields. There is some variation in results, but there is general agreement that the "peak" for extraction from all known and currently productive fields lies within a very few decades in the future. Known fields that cannot be tapped now due to cost or political constraints have been factored in by a few analysts - subject to rather large uncertainties - and including "known but untapped" reserves extends the peak possibly by a few years - not even by decades.

Once the peak production for currently operating fields is passed, it is fairly clear that current and extrapolated continual growth in consumption rates can be sustained only by opening new fields.

NO EVIDENCE of any "replenishment" on a time scale comparable to the time required to empty any field that's opened and extracted HAS EVER BEEN FOUND. It is entirely academic what "replenishment" process may or may not occur. All the crude oil that can be found, by us and by our next few hundred generations (perhaps our next few thousand generations) is already there.

A "vast oil field" is, on earth scale, essentially a small "pimple" on the face of the earth. We have looked at large enough areas where there are "no pimples" to make some estimates of how likely new discoveries are. It's not encouraging in the long term (a few decades) but we can predict that production will "dribble down to drips and drabs" in the not too distant future. The only thing we can debate is a quibble over years or decades.

In about the year 15,000,000 CE, if any of the current replenishment theories works, it may again be viable for someone to "invent" internal combustion engines. It will all be new by then.

John