I don't think there will be a post oil industry, at least not as long as we have roads and cars.
We don't really need as much oil for walking paths, trains, or bike trails, and potholes are a different problem with different solutions for those.
As long as we have cars as we know them, we'll have oil. Road construction require s oil, all of the plastics in cars require oil, trucks require oil, shipping vessels require oil, it's oil all the way down.
It would require a seismic shift in life as we know it to live in a post oil world. Our stockpiles are pretty low (maybe a month in the US).
Does anyone expect there will be a post oil industry? I would assume (with not particular knowledge on the subject mind) that once we wind down oil use for fuel and to some extent plastics, there will be enough oil in the ground to support enough extraction for asphalt and other currently trivial uses indefinitely.
Afaik, (extremely simplifying) refineries split crude oil into fractions; we burn lighter hydrocarbons as fuel, make plastics out of the middle/heavy parts and what's left in the pot are some heavy, dirty remains that we figured make good roads instead of being thrown out.
We've already hit the point that electric cars are cheaper to operate, yet photovoltaic prices keep falling. Even equipment like electric excavators is now a thing. Batteries keep improving. It'll compound to smaller and smaller fuel, thus oil needs, so there will be less refining, thus less asphalt.
The assumption wasn't that that there will be no oil extraction, it was that there might be a future without tons of almost free road material. But I have zero expertise in oil macroeconomics, the question might've been stupid, I don't know that, haha
An asphalt roofing shingle company just closed in Minneapolis due to the city's new CO2 tax. The local environmental group held a little press conference crowing about it.
Mind you, this won't change the demand for asphalt shingles, they'll just be shipped from further, generating more C02 on the whole.
The only other current alternatives are all non-renewable as well- mined clay, slate, or metal. For residential roofs, I'm hoping metal continues to come down in price, as they tend to last longer and can be made to look quite good. For commercial / flat roofed buildings, there still needs to be some very thick rubberized underlayment below gravel or whatever to prevent standing water from getting in. The same is true for sod roofs in hobbit style earth homes.
So, yeah, there's still people in power who expect that all petroleum based products are equally evil and must be punished.
Traditional oil extraction (drilling a well, not things like the oilsands or fracking) is actually relatively eco-friendly compared to other building products like concrete or steel; the problem is that burning it isn't great for the environment, and the heavy demand due to burning most of it means that lots of it is extracted using the less eco-friendly methods. So I think that the current plan is to continue extracting it more-or-less forever, just in much lower volumes than right now.
milkytron|25 days ago
We don't really need as much oil for walking paths, trains, or bike trails, and potholes are a different problem with different solutions for those.
As long as we have cars as we know them, we'll have oil. Road construction require s oil, all of the plastics in cars require oil, trucks require oil, shipping vessels require oil, it's oil all the way down.
It would require a seismic shift in life as we know it to live in a post oil world. Our stockpiles are pretty low (maybe a month in the US).
0xffff2|25 days ago
Perz1val|24 days ago
We've already hit the point that electric cars are cheaper to operate, yet photovoltaic prices keep falling. Even equipment like electric excavators is now a thing. Batteries keep improving. It'll compound to smaller and smaller fuel, thus oil needs, so there will be less refining, thus less asphalt.
The assumption wasn't that that there will be no oil extraction, it was that there might be a future without tons of almost free road material. But I have zero expertise in oil macroeconomics, the question might've been stupid, I don't know that, haha
zdragnar|25 days ago
Mind you, this won't change the demand for asphalt shingles, they'll just be shipped from further, generating more C02 on the whole.
The only other current alternatives are all non-renewable as well- mined clay, slate, or metal. For residential roofs, I'm hoping metal continues to come down in price, as they tend to last longer and can be made to look quite good. For commercial / flat roofed buildings, there still needs to be some very thick rubberized underlayment below gravel or whatever to prevent standing water from getting in. The same is true for sod roofs in hobbit style earth homes.
So, yeah, there's still people in power who expect that all petroleum based products are equally evil and must be punished.
gucci-on-fleek|25 days ago
mrguyorama|25 days ago
antisthenes|25 days ago