ABSTRACT
Oil and natural gas – the products of the burial and transformation of biomass over the last 200 million years – has historically had no equal as an energy source for its intrinsic qualities of extractability, transportability, versatility, and cost. Oil accounts for approximately one-third of all the energy used in the world. EIA projects that oil will continue to be a major source of energy well into the future, with world consumption of petroleum products growing to 118 million barrels per day by 2030. To date, world oil production has come almost exclusively from what are considered to be “conventional sources” of oil, which can be produced using today’s mainstream technologies, compared with “nonconventional sources” that require more complex or more expensive technologies to extract, such as oil sands, heavy oil and oil shale.
