Black booty

THE media airwaves are buzzing with it. Whether it's front-page headlines about just how much petroleum is left in our North Sea backyard, or the global geopolitics behind a plummeting oil price, or the noisy protests against hydrocarbon exploration by fracking beneath our homes, you can't escape the reality that our daily lives are intimately coupled with the extraordinary black gold that, for the most part, lies deep beneath our feet. Oil.

How ironic that our modern world is so hopelessly wedded to a substance that began life in the bodies of tiny marine creatures soaking up the sun's energy in an ocean 10s of millions of years ago. As these creatures died, they accumulated in the soft muds of that ancient sea floor, eventually being compressed and compacted under a sediment pile kilometres thick. And it was in that geological pressure cooker that the organic make-up of life metamorphosed into the hydrocarbon chemistry that fuels our world. It is an incredible feat of natural engineering that has created a material jam-packed with far more energy than almost anything else on the planet - more than the wind, or the waves, or the tides. And yet it is the liberation of that fossil solar energy 10s of millions of years later, that transformed the planet and redefined us as a species.

It is that transformation that I'm fascinated by. After all, in almost every respect, I'm a child of oil. I grew up in the 1970s, and I remember it as a decade plagued by energy crises. What haunted the British governments of the day, was the lack of a reliable oil supply. Would the lights keep going out? Would there be enough fuel for our cars? As a kid of course, I had no idea where our oil came actually from or anything of the people who fought over its control and supply.

Ever since Henry Ford launched the Model T, a car for "the multitude", our demand for gasoline has been insatiable. From the king of crude (John D Rockefeller) onwards, we not only stalked the planet for oil, we found more and more uses for it. A holy trinity of oil, plastics and fertilisers made us so dependent on the black stuff, that energy security became the number-one priority for the world's leading industrial nations. The Second World War had exhausted America's oil reserves, so its victors President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, hatched a plan to divide the Middle East's oilfields between them - fundamentally rewiring global geopolitics in the decades to come. But when, a decade later, the oil-producing nations tried to take back control of their own oil from the greedy Western energy companies, the oil and gas fields of the Middle East became a focus for coups d'état and military conflict. Oil even became a weapon in its own right. By threatening to either raise the price or cut off supply entirely, the world balance of power changed between the Middle Eastern producers (OPEC) and us, the industrialised, dependent West.

But in 1964, the year of my birth, everything changed. Western oil companies started to scour beneath the seabed of the North Sea and the first offshore wells were drilled. A few weeks after my first birthday, gas was struck in the southern North Sea. By the time I started primary school, the first giant oil fields were coming on stream and in my teenage years it seemed almost every night the News showed some oil rig being tugged reluctantly out into the deep, hostile waters east of Aberdeen. Forget the space race of the 1960s and 1970s - it was the wilds of the North Sea that became Britain's new frontier. Beyond the haar, invisible to the energy-needy Brits, a second industrial revolution was taking place. The development in deep sea drilling meant that previously unviable sources could be commercially produced from the ocean depths. For the first time in our history we became an oil exporter. Britain in the 1980s dripped with new-found oil wealth. We unshackled ourselves from our 20th-century energy security nightmare.

That engineering revolution was underpinned by an exciting new science crucial to the exploration for oil. Geology. So I guess it comes as no surprise I decided to go to university to study it. Most of my fellow students were piped directly into the oil industry though I opted instead for an academic career, teaching the next generation of university students who dreamed of lucrative careers as petroleum geologists.

Today, I still teach students about geology of oil and gas but the messages are more complex, and the future prospects are far less clear-cut. Our love affair with oil has soured. What began as an exciting new form of energy has ended, in the space of just a couple of generations, as addiction.

Like most addicts, it is difficult to decide just when it became a problem. Growing up, I was oblivious to how hydrocarbons were invading my home and shaping my life. Whether it came from the spoils of Tupperware parties or Avon cosmetic evenings, from the shops as shiny new kitchen appliances or down the chimney at Christmas as a plastic toy, my home was being crowded by paraphernalia of petroleum-infused products.

Later, when I learned to drive, I would encounter another fossil fuel fix, not just in the petrol that I poured into my car but its upholstery and fittings, the tyres it ran on, even the tarmac it travelled along. By the time I was an adult, married with a young family of my own, I was - though I didn't know it - totally immersed in oil. I was - I am - Hydrocarbon Man. And that's when I recognised the dark side to my hydrocarbon compulsion.

There are countless challenges to a global economy fed on a fossil fuel diet of oil, gas and coal, but the one that looms large over the industry is the threat of global warming. Such is the strength of the climate science underpinning the argument that our burning of carbon-based fuels is releasing a cocktail of gases that are warming the atmosphere and acidifying the oceans, that all but the most trenchant of oil industry insiders, are convinced. As someone who has travelled to many parts of the planet that are on the front line of human-accelerated climate change, the spectre of what our future world might look like if fossil fuel use continues unabated is truly frightening. Most of the climate scientists and petroleum geologists I speak to are all too aware of the perilous challenges that face our children and grandchildren as a result of our intoxicating experiment with the hydrocarbon drug.

So, how to get out of this mess we've found ourselves in? Like all those confronting addiction, it seems to me we have to face some harsh truths.

First, like it or not, fossil fuels are part of our daily routine. We are utterly dependent on them and the way they shape our lives. In the UK, hydrocarbons power two-thirds of our electricity, supply most of the heat in our homes and fuel the bulk of our transport. They're used in just about every material we consume. Oil is contained in all things plastic; it helps make the fertilisers that grow our cereals, the synthetic fabrics we wear, and many of the chemicals we use. The idea that our society can go "carbon-free" overnight - by simply opting out of fossil fuels - misjudges just how dependent we are. In looking for someone to blame for our current woes, why do we love to hate the industry we can't live without?

Second, despite cries of "peak oil" in the recent past, there's no sign our hydrocarbon drug is running out. There's plenty of oil and gas left in the ground. What's fast disappearing is "easy" oil. The so-called "elephant" oil fields that fuelled our oil gluttony through the 1970s and 1980s are dwindling and few giants have come on stream to replace them. In many fields around the world - including the Middle East - the oil business is pouring billions of dollars into "smarter" technology and even smarter thinking to find and suck out the precious oil that's left. At the same time, to satisfy rising demands, energy companies are venturing into politically volatile areas and/or challenging natural environments - which is making oil harder and more expensive to produce. While the current oil price has dropped, the likelihood is that if our oil fix is to continue, we're going to have to pay way over the odds for it in the future.

Third, given that it's obvious we have a problem, why aren't we doing anything about it? After all, there's plenty of alternative energy to choose from, mostly in the form of proven renewable technologies like wind, hydro, thermal and solar or emerging nuclear technologies such as thorium reactors. Everyone has their favourite, and also their "no gos". However, agreeing on an energy diet that is palatable to all, both extends indecision and the hydrocarbon age into the 21st century. Almost every oil geologist I speak to acknowledges that a sustainable future requires a shift from fossil fuels to renewables but few if any, see a clear strategy of how that transition is to be achieved. And of course, investing in alternative energy technology is only part of the problem.

The hard truth is that we need to have a public debate about how to wean ourselves off of oil and gas, and that means facing up to our dependence and recognising that "cold turkey" could be long and painful. Because in many respects, the writing is on the wall. In the 1950s, a top US oil geologist, Marvin Hubbert, made two famous pronouncements. The first was that America's oil production would peak in the 1970s and then decline. At the time, bullish oil executives laughed him off the garage forecourt, until the US oil did exactly that in 1973. That made his second claim all the more portentous: that the generation born in the 1960s would live to see the end of our Hydrocarbon Age.

So, what is the prospect for me - Hydrocarbon Man - to outlive the age that defined me? Unlikely, I think. Having spent much of the last year steeped (sometimes literally) in oil, it's hard to see us collectively reining in our insatiable consumption for all the energy, plastics, and chemicals derived from hydrocarbons. And yet, as we look for hard-to-find and more expensive oil in ever more tricky corners of the world and as political and economic pressure builds for real meaningful action on climate change, I am starting to get the feeling that, even if I don't see the passing of the great Oil Age, I think my kids might. And that brings with it an even more intriguing thought. What will that world look like?

Prof Iain Stewart is professor of Geosciences Communication at Plymouth University. He presents the three-part series Planet Oil, which begins on BBC Two Scotland this Tuesday at 9pm