Oil 201: What Happens When the Oil Stops Flowing | Frankly 136
About this episode
This episode explores the critical role of oil in modern society and the implications of its depletion.
This week's Frankly is the second in a three-part series on the role oil plays in modern civilization, prompted by the recent flow disruptions and geopolitical conflict surrounding the Strait of Hormuz. This installment explores how modern society has been built on the assumption of cheap and abundant energy, and what happens when that assumption breaks down. Nate describes the ways our built systems, including food production, water treatment, manufacturing, and global trade, are calibrated to cheap energy inputs, and how processes that look economically efficient are often deeply inefficient in physical terms. He walks through the staggering degree to which the modern food system runs on fossil hydrocarbons, noting that roughly ten calories of fossil energy now go into every calorie of food on the plate, and that the Haber-Bosch process for synthetic fertilizer is what allows the planet to feed roughly half of its current population. Nate then traces the accelerating depletion of conventional oil fields and the turn towards shale, which behaves as a fundamentally different resource than the conventional wells it has been masking. He considers the alternatives often proposed as…
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