Petroleum and Coal are concentrated so.urces of energy, which have been stockpiled by nature over millions of years. Man's discovery of these resources, and also of the ways by which to convert heat energy into electricity and mechanical power, has altered his life style altogether and has made possible the civilisation as we know it to-day. In the process, he has been drawing on the stockpile so fast that the end of their availability seems to be in sight.
The end, is unlikely to come suddenly. Initially, in both the cases, there is going to be a phase during which the growth in supplies will lag behind the growth in demand. Later, the supplies will decline leading to increasing scarcity and a progressive further increase in price. Both coal and oil are not energy sources alone; these are also the starting points in the manufacture of many important products (fertilisers, plastics, man-made fibres,leather substitutes, etc.) and some administrative interven-tion may be required to ensure equitable supplies to both these directions.
Many dire predictions have been made about the global commen-cement of the declining phase of petroleum production. There are many ways in which this can be pushed back a little into the future. Increased discoveries and the ability to recover more from what has been dis-covered can make more petroleum available and help in doing this; so
can cons~rvation measures by reducing the growth rate in demand. One
Japanese paper forecasts that JlEventually, the earth's entire oil resources will be exhausted by the year 2064 if we leave energy and population pOlicies as they arei/o But long before its exhaustion, the supplies will commence to decline, and, ·so far as can be seen, this point is likely to be reached much earlier. In any case the period involved is likely to be a matter of decades rather than centuries.
The coal availability can be somewhat better but not to the extent many think. Some divide the estimated quantity of coal likely to have been originally in place underground in India by the current rate of consumption and think that there will be enough available in the coun try for centuries. This is, however, not true. Firstly, not all the quantities estimated come under the category of 'Proved'. A lot belong to the classes of 'Indicated' and 'Inferred'. Secondly, not all the coal in place is recoverable. Thirdly, a lot of it is of poor quality with useful heat values extending from 8600 down to 1300 K Cal/kg. If the quantities were to be adjusted for their lower useful heat value, and deductions are made for what has already been produced, the amount ceases to be astronomical and the commencement of any decline in availability can again be a matter of decades rather than centuries.
I have mentioned a little also on coal beside petroleum. The reason is that there is a certain amount of inter-changeability, and one can be replaced by the other in some of the applications. The replacement, however, would not be on a 1:1 basis. Firstly, coal has a much lower useable heat value, which, depending on its quality, can range from 60% to only 12% of that of petroleum. Secondly, the efficiencies involved in the energy utilisation process of many types of coal-based systems are often much lower than that of petroleum-based systems. .
As a result, and, taking into consideration the various energy processes involving the use of oil in India, one often uses an averaged figure of 6.5 tonnes of coal as replacement required for 1 tonne of petroleum in energy overviews. However, even this is for a fairly good grade of coal. With the very low grades, which comprise a large part of our resources, the replacement quantity needed, could go up to as much as 25 tonnes per tonne of petroleum. Any large scale replacement of petroleum by coal is not, therefore, going to be an easy matter.
Petroleum has the advantage of being not only a concentrated energy source, but it can also be used in relatively small and light weight engines, which (for their size) can generate much more power than is possible economically by other concentrated sources. Also, unlike the steam systems, the time requirement for raising the power output of these engines from zero to full is very short. These properties have revolutionised land, rail and water transport and have made flying possible. Conversely, any reduction in availability of petroleum is going to affect these activities the most. It is also going to affect those areas which require small scale scattered mobile power source, and where (like rural lighting) kerosene is still in predominant demand.
The recoverable petroleum resources are not evenly distributed all over the world. A recent United States Geological Survey paper es-timated the identified future recoverable reserves, as at 1.1.90, as 1052.7 billion US bls of oil (or say 146 billion tonnes) and 4499.8 trillion eft of gas (or say about 115 billion tonnes of oil equivalent). Out of these, the share of the major petroliferous regions were as follows:
Region Percentage of the Future- Percentage Share of Recoverable Global Reserves The Global Oil
Oil Gas production in 1989 ~M=id""d~le-:E~a-st---""""5-9.--3%""'o ----3-2-9--,%--- 26.9% Erstwhile USSR 7.9% . 34.5% 19.4%
North America 9.8% 10.4% 19.4%
South America 6.9% 4.0% 6.9%
Africa 6.8% 5.8% 10.2%
The percentages of reserves shared by India and its neighbouring countries were reported to be
India China Indonesia & } Malayasia & Brunei
0.41% of the oil and 0.46% of the Gas.
2.98% 0.73%
1.94% 3.37%
.1*
The estimates made by the Indian agencies are somewhat more, but not enough to make much different to the relative picture.
With the established reserves concentrated in a few countries, the rest are obviously going to remain in a state of dependency on them for their requirements of petroleum. With its relatively small established reserves, India would naturally remain even more so, unless it can develop alternative sources of energy or find more reserves.
Its present situation concerning this dep~ndancy is as follows:
Consumption of Indigenous Supply Ind. Supply of Year petroleum products of crude oil crude oil as % of
(million tonnes) products consumed 1987-88 48.94 30.36 62.04% lakes mto
ac-88-89 52.88 32.04 60.59 count Refy., 89-90 56.78 34.09 60.04 fuel consump-tion but not 90-91 57.75 33.02 57.18 the other 91-92 59.44 30.35 51.06 Refy. losses.
In order to form an idea of how much more there may still be available to discover, petroleum agencies make another kind of assess-ment called 'Prognosticated Resources' of what may ultimately be dis-covered and from this work out what reserves can be hopefully, taken as still awaiting discovery. At an assessed 95% level of probability, USGS has estimated this quantity (i.e. recoverable reserves awaiting discovery) as at 1.1.90, to be 303.6 billion US bls (or say about 42 billion tonnes) of oil and
2m.
1 trillion eft (or say about 71 billion tonnes of oil equivalent) natural gas for the whole world. Regionwise, these quantities also follow an uneven distribution pattern as follows:Region
Middle East Erstwhile USSR North America South America China India
Indonesia, Malayasia & Brunei
Percentage of Recoverable Global Reserves Estimated to be still Awaiting Discovery
Oil IGas
24.8% 21.8%
18.0% 26.6%
20.8% 19.2%
11.2% 5.3%
6.1% 3.8%
0.46% 0.32%
7.6% 2.69%
Here again, the assessment of the situation in .India by its local agencies is higher, but of late there have been no major discoveries to back up these hopeful expectations. Obviously, much more effort is required to improve the prognostications, to accelerate the discoveries, to boost up the recoverable reserves, to improve the recoveries, and to raise the production to a level that can be sustained by the reserves. The resources required for this in terms of money, men, skills, technology and equipment is enormous. In any case, discovery is often a function of having the right ideas, and a multiplicity of agencies viewing the prob-lem from many different angles have often a better chance. Presumably,
these reasons have led the Government to open up petroleum explora-tion and development in the country to bidding by others.
On a limited scale, such facilities have been allowed also in the past, but barring the pioneers (Assam Oil Co. & The Burmah Oil Co.), ONGC and Oil India, no one has been successful in making any commercial discoveries so far. Let us hope that the new groups will be more success-ful in their endeavours. The country badly needs more discoveries, and, having made these, a substantial improvement in the recoveries at-tainable from the latter.
Apart from these, it is necessary to recognise that all the con-stituents of petroleum have equal demand. There is usually more pres-sure on the middle distillates, and a substantial volume of associated gas finds no worthwhile customers and is actually flared. Pressure on petroleum can therefore be reduced to some extent by
a) increasing the recoverable resources of petroleum through enhanced oil recovery techniques,
b) increasing the output of middle distillates through modifica-tions in refinery processing, and
c) making increasing use of natural gas in areas where otherwise middle distillates would be used.
Notwithstanding these measures, there would still remain a dangerous degree of dependancy on petroleum.
The situation can be furthur eased by replacing petroleum fuelled engines in short range vehicles and mobile systems by electric motors driven by storage batteries. But for these to be really effective, the latter have to be developed to the stage where these can store lot more electricity (in r~lation to their bulk), can accept considerably higher rates of both charging and discharge, and can be operated down to a much lower charge level, whilst maintaining an adequate operaaonallife and acceptable costs. Some developments have taken place in these direc-tions, as a result of which one can to-day think of experimentally using batteries in a"limited way as sources of mobile power for within- city runs by buses and cars. This is a very important area requiring development
and much more needs to be done. .
Even though a battery operated electric motor can take over to some extent the work done by petroleum fuelled engines, the batteries them-selves would need to be changed. Within the areas served by power grids, the only problem would relate to meeting the additional load. Outside, the difficulties would be more as most of the electricity genera-tion there takes place through mini- and small petroleum-fuelled gener-ators. To substitute these, one may have to look for and develop suitable local alternatives. Depending upon the circumstances, these can be based on solar energy (photo-voltaic or solar-thermal), biogas, agricultural residues, commercial fire-wood, etc.
Within the grid areas, the initial supplemental power may come from conservation measures and coal. Later, nuclear and hydel
tion would have to take over to the extent their inherently long lead-time and our environmental concerns permit them to come up.
Summarising, over the years, the human society as a whole has become heavily dependant on petroleum for its energy requirements (particularly in the transportation and mobile power sectors), as a source for light and heat in remote areas, and in the manufacture of a wide range of petrochemical and downstream products. To meet its growing demand, the global production of petroleum has reached 3 billion tonnes per annum in 1989. The balance of identified reserves are unlikely to be able to sustain even a small, say 4% growth rate per annum on this quantity by more than about 20 yrs. Beyond this, the production would commence to decline unless a substantial part of the balance of what are hopefully regarded as likely to be discoverable are actually discovered and added to the tangible reserves. Substantial· success in petroleum conservation measures, in increasing the proportion of the discovered oil & gas that can be recoverd, increasing the production of middle distillates, and in mobilising alternative energy sources and chemical feed stocks would all help to keep the supplies going longer.
Large-scale application and development of all these measures will take a long time it is not too soon now to start a strong thrust in all these directions.
The other aspect relates to the uneven pattern of petroleum's global distribution. As a result, the countries less endowed with petroleum, and more dependant on others, may have to face shortage much sooner. In India, the production has already dropped from 34.09 mtpa in 1989-90 to 30.35 mtpa in 1991-92 which was around 51 % of the demand. Efforts are being made to raise this back to 34 mtpa and then to increase it furthur. Even then the identified reserves are unlikely to supporta4% p.a. growth rate beyond 9 to 10 years. Much would depend on what can be done to increase recoveries, to discover more, and otherwise to implement measures similar to those outlined earlier.
Starting with a small discovery in Digboi, and a slow growth leading to a small production of only 0.3 million tonnes per annum, by the mid-1950s, the country's petroleum industry has taken a quantum jump forward to reach 34.09 mtpa of oil by 1989- 90. The refining capacity has likewise grown from a little under 0.3 mtpa in early 1954 to nearly 52 mtpa by 1992. Even though there has been some decline in crude oil production since 1989- 90, it is hoped that the petroleum operating groups involved will be able to reverse this trend, keep up their good work and help to keep the country's dependency down as much (and for as long) as possible.
A.B. DAS GUPTA
