Iraqi oil reserves estimated at 143B barrels

(CNN) -- Iraq's estimated oil reserves have grown by nearly 25 percent, the oil ministry announced Monday.

"Iraq's oil reserves which are extractable are 143.1 billion barrels," said Hussein al-Shahristani, Iraq's oil minister, based on data provided by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The OPEC figures are about 28 billion barrels higher than previous estimates.

At $81 a barrel, about what oil was trading at early Monday, the added reserves would be worth about $2.27 trillion.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/10/04/iraq.oil.reserves/index.html?hpt=Sbin

I believe I've heard the number three trillion associated with the total cost of the war.

By the way, the higher the price of oil the greater the recoverable reserve. That is why we will never run out of oil.

and the global economy will collapse... unless we can find practical alternatives.

Yes, oil will become more scarce, and yes the price will skyrocket (for a while, but then it will drop back down to near nothing), but it does not follow that the global economy will collapse. There was, after all, a global economy long before we became dependent on oil and there will still be one after its been replaced with a less useful source of energy.

in one way or another. Probably the most critical is food. If food becomes scarce.. it could get very very ugly.

plastics, fertilizer, and a lot of other stuff that we normally associate with oil are often produced from natural gas.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that if oil were to be shut off very quickly there would be major disruption, but it won't be shut off very quickly, it will dribble to a halt. And with each dribble the alternative sources of concentrated energy become more attractive. The point is that it will not happen over night, so it may indeed be very painful over a seemingly long period of time but it won't be the end of mankind as we have known it for about 25,000 years. The very worst case situation backs us up to the late 1800's in terms of the technology of energy consumption.

but they will both become very expensive and have serious adverse effects on the economies of the world. Not abruptly but it will just get worse and worse and worse until the whole thing collapses.. unless we can come up with alternatives.

But it's a temporary situation. By my reckoning the conversion of natural gas to liquid fuels will not keep our oil dependent economy afloat, and even if it could, it would only do it for a very short time.

Liquid fuels can be replaced by other bad sources easily enough. Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that the price of oil shot up to $200 a barrel tomorrow because somehow they found out that all reserve estimates were way way off. So out of nowhere the price of gas shoots up to $6 a gallon or so. What happens dam near instantly? Electric cars. Battery development will have to follow because the cars would be built right now. So soon the roads are as polluted with electric cars as the air is with coal smoke from the power plants required to fuel them. And where do we, the air-breathing-public, come out in this deal? Certainly no better than we were with oil.

But back to the point, what I was thinking of was the conversion of natural gas to fertilizer and plastics. Our foodstuff, such as it is, is very much a product of natural gas and of course everything we touch these days is made of plastic. I think those concers will far outweigh our transportation problems. After all, in most cases communications can easily replace transportation. We only have so many people moving around because they want to and because its cheap to do, not because its necessary.

Population exploded with the discovery of oil. We cannot support our current population without oil. Thats the brutal reality.

I ceed your point about the importance of increase in population but I would not say that our current population could not be supported without oil. I not only think we could support our current population without oil I actually think we could do a better job of supporting our current population without oil.

given the current world population and the how oil & natural gas are so deeply intertwined into our lives. Maybe a few survivalists and organic types can come close to it but the vast majority of us cant... at least until we can develop some real practical alternatives.