I don’t disagree, just probably the worst spokesperson on the planet to make this point.

There’s the rest of the world out there, where these guys are nowhere near irrelevant.

We're at a significant point now, BTW. A few months ago, renewables reached 100% of the energy market growth, with installation rate (= market share) still doubling. It's in the single per cent of total market and doubling, and all further increase in the rate of renewable installation is also a contraction in the oil market.

"The Saudi economy is highly reliant on its petroleum sector. Oil accounts on average in recent years for approximately 40% of Saudi GDP and 75% of fiscal revenue, with substantial fluctuations depending on oil prices each year."

"In 2016, the Saudi government launched its Saudi Vision 2030 program to reduce its dependency on oil and diversify its economic resources. By 2022, Saudi Arabia had only modestly reduced its dependence on oil."

A relative in the oil industry once told me that any extra oil you can get out of an existing rig is cheaper than setting up a new rig somewhere new, no matter how much you have to invest to get at the extra oil.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39575172 | https://electrek.co/2024/03/02/1-in-5-new-car-sales-globally... ("HN: IEA: 20% of 2023 new car sales globally were EVs, curbing oil demand")

https://www.ft.com/content/b255d7b9-88f6-4481-a3a6-87542d2b7... | https://archive.today/eC5Pp ("Zombie car factories on the rise in China as buyers opt for EVs")

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/09/21/the-ev-revolution-in-5-... ("The EV Revolution in 5 Charts")

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21419505/oil-gas-... ("Big Oil’s hopes are pinned on plastics. It won’t end well.")

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-21/scotland-... | https://archive.today/nrat5 ("Scotland’s Fuel Binge Offers Glimpse of Future Without Refinery")

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/narrative/production/sub-to... ("Refinery closures lower domestic crude oil distillation operating capacity, but refinery utilization rates remain flat over the long term")

We can also probably reduce our use of plastic in packaging by quite a bit. Drinks used to be packaged in glass bottles. We could go back to that.

Glass is heavy, breakable, and not worth recycling (the planet's crust is made of glass so there's no real reason to recycle it, the glass shards harm the recycling of everything else, and the weight consumes extra energy in transport.)

And yes, you could make plastic directly out of air. And you can recycle the plastic back into air by burning it. It's a very clean process.

In what fantasy universe does oil, once extracted, not turn into CO2 emissions shortly after?

Carbon capture hasn't been shown to work economical, at scale, anywhere afaik. Despite huge investments.

Ok you can have plastics or other uses like lubricants or paints. No wait... much of that is single use & at best ends up as CO2 as well.

On the one hand, that seems like a reasonable approach. On the other hand, if we only have on the order of decades of known oil reserves, we'll have to phase out of oil use at some point (likely in most of our lifetimes), no?

For all intents and purposes energy from sun, wind and water-flow are infinite - if any of these disappears, we can be almost sure that humanity is also done, so that's one problem solved.

Some of us on this site will see the end of oil most likely however.

While solar, wind and hydro seem infinite - they don't just magically reach the end user. Solar requires solar panels which have a finite life span. Same for all the other energy sources.

Oil has done so well for so long because its such an energy dense resource, works in so many operating conditions, and is readily available and shipped to nearly everywhere. It's really quite incredible.

Yes, there are likely negative effects from using it - but I'd expect to see that energy source play a critical role in resolving those issues too.

That's about 2 liters of oil (or 1.44 liters of gas & diesel) per person per day.

Not a lot by western standards. Absolutely enormous by some developing countries.