• Question: Some statistics suggest oil is going to run out in around 50 years. What would be the implications of this on your work?

    Asked by jimmylittlewing to David, Helen, Ian, rhysphillips, Sarah on 19 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Ian van der Linde

      Ian van der Linde answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      No direct implications for me, except that I’d need to buy an electric car to get to work! That and we’d probably stop using plastic so much as it would because we’d have no oil to make it from – perhaps one day plastic will be more valuable than gold!

    • Photo: David Corne

      David Corne answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Hah! That is the reason for one of the projects I am working on. There is a chance that oil will run out sooner than that, before we have enough other energy sources in place to replace it. For this reason, there have been a few projects funded around the world which are trying to make sure we get as much oil as we can out of the reservoirs we know about — i.e. to help keep oil supplies going long enough so there is no gap before other energy takes over. So, my project is designing intelligent computer software that tries to guess the details right about an oil reservoir – the better it does, the more accurate it will be about predicting where is the best place to drill the next well.

    • Photo: Rhys Phillips

      Rhys Phillips answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      No direct implications on mine either although we’d need to look into alternative fuels for aircraft!

    • Photo: Helen Fletcher

      Helen Fletcher answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      No direct implications but I hope they find an alternative to oil soon!!

    • Photo: Sarah Cook

      Sarah Cook answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      I’d pretty much be unemployed….

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