May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest refiner, said the transition away from oil-derived fuels is probably 100 years away.
Petroleum-based fuels including gasoline and diesel, as well as hydrocarbons such as coal and natural gas, will remain the dominant sources of energy for factories, offices, homes and cars for decades because there are no viable alternatives, Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson told reporters today after Exxon Mobil’s annual shareholders meeting in Dallas.



http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...MsI&refer=home

 

I believe him. If there were viable alternatives, oil companies would be investing and innovating into them like crazy.

 

Well, there WON'T be a viable alternative, on a national scale, until we get off our a**es as a nation and start to get to work adding alternative-fuel stations to our gas-station infrastructure. I posted more or less at length about this in other threads, so I won't go over the details again here.

IMO, at least some of the money the Obama (and Bush) administrations threw at the Stimulus Package and bank/auto-company bailouts could have been better spent for new ethanol (E85), propane, diesel, natural-gas, compressed-hydrogen, and electric-charging stations. You shouldn't have to drive several hundered miles just to fill up if you own one of these vehicles.

 

they do have alternatives...they're just waiting until all the oil is gone....why should they introduce alternatives at this point? too much $$$$ still to be made.

 

exxon as always is full of ****. 100 years my ***. 100 years from now we could have transitioned already from electric cars to hydrogen cars to cars that run on air to cars to fly to mars.

The world will hit peak oil sometime in the next decade. Most likely around 2015. So exxon is saying the period from peak oil to no oil will last around 95 years???

I'm willing to bet my life it won't

 

There are "possible" alternatives that could become viable but right now the costs are overwhelming. And since America is already "bankrupt", switching now just isn't going to happen.

We're talking trillions of dollars to overhaul the current infrastructure into alternative ones. Who's going to pay for that?

Oil is just so practical and yes, still cheap.

 

that is correct and the govt continues to ensure there's no incentive to develop anything else.

 

Well, if we're going to pour trillons into banks, insurance companies, mortgage financiers, and auto companies, why not into some badly needed alternative-fuel infrastructure to help ease the transition from oil?

And as the world starts to run out of oil, it won't STAY cheap. We got a taste of that last summer.

 

I often give oil companies a break, but, this time, Exxon is indeed full of it. At the present rate of worldwide oil use, there is no way it is going to last another century....and we haven't seen anything, yet, like what China is going to be using in the years to come.

 

Yeah, 100 years. That laughable.

 

So I won't see this transition in my lifetime...bummer...I'll be using oil for the rest of my life...

 

well, it will last long enough for me not to care if there's alt fuel or not.

i'll be old, dead or crippled by that time.

so basically, i don't give a crap.


besides, all other technology is just too costly, or infeasible, like the 100mi/charge EV.

i do believe that oil will last for a good chunk of this century.

oil is always being made by Earth from carbon materials. humans just haven't drilled all the places yet

 

E85 is unsustainable compared to what we have now, its energy balance is a joke same with hydrogen
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0329132436.htm

we need more nuclear, less fossil fuel will be used by power generation then, but these tree huggers keep blocking everything. Even for all these "alternative energies" they all still rely on fossil fuels

 

No. If there were viable alternatives, they would be selling them no matter how much oil there is. Because if they didn't, someone else would.

 

And that is exacly true. The hydrogen and electric cars are using more fossil fuels than regular cars in the sense that electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Hydrogen is especially bad, because more electricity is used by extracting hydrogen from water than produced by burning hydrogen.

As far as nuclear, thats requires uranium or plutonium, which are also fossil elements. While nuclear reactors are very efficient, it is unclear what Earth's resources of these elements are. They are probably not as abundant as oil, and might not last very long.