ddubb industries

Might as well face it, we’re addicted to oil

March 30th, 2008 cultural, ecological, economic, political, technical

As I sit in my 59 degree home with an empty oil furnace tank, I’m thankful that we made it through the winter with fuel. Too bad it wasn’t enough for the mysterious Appalachian post-winter weather spasms. It took over $1000 to fill the tank in the fall and now it’s dry. This summer I’ll be looking into replacing some of our larger single-pane windows. Until then, we’re looking at some cheaper alternatives to fill our tank this coming year. I’m surprised to find that trendy and new-fangled biodiesel, is actually cheaper than petrodiesel. We just need to find a supplier who can truck some to us. Here’s some interesting facts from my research found at http://biofuels.coop:

• total oil used since 1850:
  1 trillion barrels
• total world reserves remaining:
  1 trillion barrels
• percent oil discovered before 1973:
  70%
• time left at current world usage (29 billion/yr):
  33 years
• time left if US uses strategic oil reserves:
  1 month
• time left if US uses only oil in US fields:
  3 years
• time left if US grabs/uses all of Iraq’s oil for itself:
  15 years
• time left if whole world uses oil at US’s current rate:
  6 years