What happens if we run out of oil? thumbnail It took hundreds of millions of years to create the world’s oil reserves. It took less than a century before oil became the commodity on which world power turned. And it was little more than a century before fears were raised that we would run out of oil. Fifty years further on, it’s less clear than ever how much is left. That’s because technological advance has confounded those who feared there were tight constraints on what could be drilled. The rich rewards from oil have fuelled initiative and invention. As Professor Iain Stewart explains in his BBC series Planet Oil , this wasn’t just a passion for scientific and engineering endeavour. It was economic, political and strategic military calculation that drove the UK and the US to find ways of becoming less dependent on supplies from the Middle East. Having […]