The end of school year holidays is just around the corner—and it’s the time when we spend most of our times on the road.
Besides thinking about the activities we’ll be doing, the places we’ll be visiting, or the food that we’ll be preparing, one thought that almost always comes to my mind during this season is, what would vacations be like without petroleum?
In today’s day and age, one can’t deny our dependence on petroleum products—the oil and gas industry in Singapore, overall.
Despite complaints about ever-increasing oil prices, the global oil demand remains high and it shouldn’t be surprising considering the fuel supplies 33% of all energy around the world. For many years, petroleum-based products have been making our lives easier in ways our ancestors only dreamed of.
It brought about the world’s globalisation and it’s the reason why we’re capable of hitting the roads with great convenience. This is merely the beginning and we can only imagine where would we be without petroleum.
Imagining a World Without Petroleum
Suppose all of the world’s petroleum reserves run out, life, as it’s known in the developed world, would stop.
First, there’s transportation. With our heavy reliance on oil to power our vehicles, the way we would travel without fuel would be significantly affected. Inventories would be extremely limited in quantity, spiking up oil prices. There would be long lines but it wouldn’t last though, because even the reserves would soon be gone.
Because we also need fuel to keep the lights on, power outages will soon begin. Heating or cooling our homes would also become significantly difficult and it won’t be long until our gadgets would shut off forever.
It gets much worse still because running out of petrochemicals in Singapore and the rest of the world also means running out of products made from petroleum that we’ve come to depend on—plastics, medicines, asphalt, and candles to name a few. There would also be no fuel to transport poultry, vegetables and other fresh products from across the islands and we would hardly survive unless we go back to basics, grow our own food, raise our own poultry and learn how to preserve without refrigeration.
It surprises me sometimes that our annual road trips almost always lead me to picture a world without oil. This scenario may seem unrealistic because the world will not shut off its oil supply in a day, and even with that, there are still plenty of reservoirs in the ground right?
But, if you come to think of, it may not be so unrealistic, after all, because we will indeed eventually run out of oil. Statistics have already estimated that we only have enough oil to last about 2070 but, with the rate at which the demand for oil increases, it could be sooner rather than later.
As the oil supply is depleting, we have to get serious about utilising renewable resources to power our world. There’s not much time to plan and we’ve yet to do our part to prepare for a world without oil.
What do you worry about most in a world without oil? Let’s talk in the comment section below!
