579, There is a gas which is left in the tank that needs to be purged.
I was told the name by my son's father in law who has been involved in
the design of natural gas buses. Unfortunately it is one of those
chemical names that are unpronounceable.
It builds up in the tank, so perhaps it is in liquid form.
Thats is all I know about it.

Curmudgeon, it takes a long time to develop an ocean oil field and as
it comes on line it will partly offset the decline of old fields.
This is exactly what has been calculated to show that these new large
fields cannot offset completely the decline.

I suggest that you read some of Chris Skrebowski, the ex Editor of Petroleum Review, work on his Mega projects.

He covers this very argument and is certainly more knowledgeable than
me on this. That work has been repeated by the Upsalla Global Energy
Group and the IEA. It was why the IEA stated that we need to discover
a Saudi Arabia every two years just to stand still.

Have we discovered even one Saudi Arabia in the last five years ?

Just a thought. If the peak oil theory is wrong, why then has America's production of oil declined since the 1970 (just when Hubbert said it would)? Ditto for north sea oil and gas. The US of A imports 2/3 of their oil requirements as it is.

If an individual oil field can decline then why not the entire production of oil planet wide? Surely advances in technology would reverse this decline? Has it? If tar sand could take up the slack the America's oil production would have increased to meet demand (certainly in the USA)? Yet they are still importing oil.

The problem is producing the oil at a cost we can pay. There would seem to be little economic inventive to produce oil of no one can afford it (and demand then falls so less exploration as its not economic to do so).

The IEA says world production has peaked (conventional oil). http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-11/iea-acknowledges-peak-oil -- they have access to much better data then us, I think they would know. I guess we're all going to see how it pans out from here...

Bazz i know what you are talking about, the residue is from manufactured natural gas, not the gas from the ground.
natural gas is made from wood and farm trash, which has a sticky residue.
You have been conversing with a greenie, be careful, they may contaminate you.
I wasn't aware they were using manufactured natural gas in vehicles.

Ahhhh 579, maybe you have a point there, I will have to ask.
My son's father-in-law was managing director of Dennis and
is an engineer.
Dennis is a manufacturer of buses and fire engines in the UK.
They built natural gas buses.

I think the natural gas in the UK comes from the Nth Sea oil fields
and from Russia.
It also comes from the middle east by ship as LNG to terminals in Wales.
Here it comes down the pipeline from Queensland at Moombi and Dalby.
So the gas here and in the UK would not be manufactured.

Perhaps the residue you mention is not what I was talking about but something else.

I have asked for clarification so will let you know what he says.

Most of the comments here seem to accept that all fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) are finite even if they may last for hundreds of years. There is also a general (if not unanimous) agreement that they will become more expensive to extract over time.

Several comments have acknowledged the link between energy availability and economic growth. Of course our energy does not need to come from fossil fuels alone. But it does need to be affordable. If the cost of fossil fuels keeps rising – where will the vast quantities of cheap energy come from?

The Greens would love the answer to be renewable energy. Many believe it will – but I suspect they will be disappointed when the task of trying to replace all fossil fuels at an affordable price with RE proves to be impossible. The energy density issue of RE alone will almost certainly guarantee this.

We have known how to produce almost limitless supplies of cheap energy for almost 70 years. For many reasons this has been blocked many times in many countries by various vested interests. Not least of which is the Greens themselves. I’m talking about nuclear fission of course.

Perhaps when fossil fuel prices become unaffordable for transport and electricity generation and the RE revolution fizzles we can go back to using the most high density energy source we have. We need to defuse the hysteria that seems to surround its use in the minds of some people but I’m still convinced nuclear fission is our best long term solution.

Martin how do you make them foolproof, Tsunami, Running out of coolant, earthquake, Human mistakes, or is that collateral damage.