Video spreads false notion of unlimited oil supply

CLAIM: The planet has an unlimited supply of oil.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Crude oil supplies are not unlimited, experts say. Crude oil is not a renewable resource and humans won’t be able to extract all remaining untapped resources due to economic and technological limitations.

THE FACTS: A video claiming that oil is an “unlimited” resource has spread widely among social media users on Instagram and Twitter in recent days.

The video features the text, “Oil is unlimited” while a man says, “There is an unlimited amount of oil.” He goes on to suggest that the public is being misled into thinking the oil and other resources are scarce.

An Instagram post sharing the video posted Sunday has garnered more than 10,000 likes since it was posted. A Twitter user shared the same video on Wednesday, writing, “OIL is replenished.”

But the notion is false, according to experts and government agencies. Crude oil is not a renewable resource and takes millions of years to form. While crude oil resources are thought to be abundant, humans are consuming oil much faster than it takes to form, and current technological and financial limitations prevent humans from extracting all potential oil resources.

“Oil is not a renewable resource,” Marianne Kah, an adjunct senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

Kah added that oil supplies are limited by current technology, the financial viability of what can be produced, and other constraints, like resource access, permitting and geopolitics.

“We’re depleting a fossil resource base that doesn’t get replenished, except on 100 million year timescales,” Carey King, an energy researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a phone interview. “And we’re depleting it on 100 year time scales.”

Humans won’t be able to extract all of the world’s oil resources because it won’t be cost effective or technology limitations will still exist, King said.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the global supply of crude oil, other liquid carbons, and biofuels is expected to meet global demand through 2050.

“The world’s underground oil and natural gas accumulations are limited and non-renewable,” Energy Information Administration spokesperson Chris Higginbotham wrote in an email to the AP.

Mark Finley, a fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute, wrote in an email that according to a BP report, there were 1.7 trillion barrels of proven crude oil reserves, or oil that is currently technically and economically viable to recover, at the end of 2020, which was enough to cover more than 50 years of that year’s global production. Proven oil reserves have increased as technological developments make more resources accessible and financially viable.

He added that while it’s “doubtful” that the world will run out of proven oil reserves or supplies, this will be due to decreasing demand for oil and increasing demand for cheaper sustainable energy sources.

“We’re likely to run out of oil demand before we run out of oil supply,” Finley wrote. “Yes oil is abundant; but abundant reserves don’t automatically translate into cheap prices, and the reasons can be explained by business decisions and sovereign policy choices.”

Kah noted that increased global demand for oil has led to “higher priced oil production” to meet demand.

“If global oil demand continues to rise, even higher cost supply would be needed,” Kah wrote. “Thus, oil is certainly not ‘free’ as the blogger suggested.”

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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.