The Oil Drum

You can define the physical strength of beams in physical terms and then discover that there is no shortage of tensile strength or stiffness. With oil, one of the key values is energy density. Nothing short of nuclear fuel has the energy density of oil.

Furthermore, energy source, unlike wood beams, have the characteristic that they lose value in proportion to the amount they are modified.

You can take a pile of wood laths, add glue and energy and technique and make a beam which has more value than the starting ingredients. With energy sources, the more work you do to modify them the less net energy you wind up with. Hence, ethanol from corn, oil shales and tar sands are not going to be replacements for oil.

This is the miracle of oil. It has a very high energy density, you get it by sticking a pipe in the ground, you carry it in a bucket, you use it by lighting a match to it. Any other energy source we know of suffers by comparison in at least one of those characteristics.

This is the crunch the world is in. We've been enjoying the benefits of this fantastic source of energy for over a hundred years, treating it as if it will last forever, and now we are finally facing up to the fact that it won't.