The basis for the efficient and effective functioning of all economic systems, especially in highly developed countries, is the ability to acquire and utilize an adequate amount of energy. This regularity applies to the spheres of consumption, production, and services alike. In the latter case, transport has remained one of the significant energy consumers for years. Since the time when humans and animals ceased to play the dominant role in moving goods and people, the energy consumed by transport has come almost exclusively from fuels produced through the extraction and processing of fossil fuels.
Technical progress means that the amount of energy required to transport a given mass of goods or number of people over a given distance (tonne-kilometers, passenger-kilometers) is constantly decreasing, but it must be remembered that, especially in the recent period, various branches of transport have developed to varying degrees and have changed their share in total transport to varying degrees. Considering two criteria: the application of modern technologies influencing the reduction of unit costs and the volume of total transport work performed, it should be stated that road transport has been gaining the greatest importance for several decades. Its growing popularity results primarily from its high flexibility, that is, the ease of adapting to changing directions of goods and passenger flows. Nevertheless, this constant increase in importance inevitably entails an increase in the demand for energy, i.e., fuels. Already today, the transport sector (all branches) in the European Union consumes about 30% of energy, more than 98% of which comes from gasoline or diesel oil, i.e., crude oil processing products. And the extraction and use of the latter are burdened with many threats or negative phenomena, among which the most important are considered to be:
• limited resources. Earth’s oil resources are limited, and with every barrel extracted, the amount of this raw material decreases. Modern technologies naturally allow for the exploitation of deeper deposits or extraction from deposits known until now but not exploited due to technical difficulties or poor quality of the raw material. This does not change the fact, however, that sooner or later the resources will be exhausted. The question asked today is not whether – because no one has any doubts about that – but when it will happen. According to some specialists, oil extraction has currently reached or will soon reach its peak point, and resources will be exhausted in 30 – 60 years, depending on the level of consumption, the volume of extraction, and the money invested in extraction and the technologies used in extraction
• uneven distribution on Earth. The main oil resources are not located in highly developed countries, which consume the most, but in countries that are politically and religiously unstable, governed authoritatively, or use it to achieve their own economic and/or political goals. The group of such countries is quite long, as it includes, among others, Arab countries, Russia, and Venezuela, i.e., all currently significant suppliers. As a result, oil is often referred to as a political raw material, and since the first oil shock, the concept of an “oil bomb” has been in use
• constant increase in demand, translating into price increases. Between 1972 and 2008, the nominal price of a barrel of oil increased more than 40-fold. The real increase was lower, partly due to inflation or the decline in the real value of the dollar – the currency in which oil is settled – but even so, the real increase was quite significant. Furthermore, many specialists forecast that due to, among other things, political-military turmoil (Iran, Iraq) and the significant needs of the very dynamically developing economies of China and India, oil prices in the coming months and years, although certainly with interruptions, will continue to rise. Thus, subsequent so-called psychological barriers will be overcome, and the necessity of paying 120 – 130 USD per barrel seems quite real in the not-too-distant future
• adverse climate change. The use of fossil fuels leads to environmental pollution and generally has a negative impact on living conditions, both in the short and long term. A particularly worrying phenomenon is global warming, the pejorative effects of which we can already experience today (weather anomalies), and which over the next few decades will affect life on Earth badly, if not dramatically, contributing to the triggering of phenomena whose consequences we are not even fully able to predict.
Besides these negative elements, the extraction and use of crude oil will certainly be influenced by the pro-environmental policy implemented by the richest and most ecologically conscious countries. Within its framework, the European Union aims to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 2/2009.