ABSTRACT

The law of exhaustible resources says that fossil fuels and radioactive minerals will be consumed and depleted. Even if we as geologists and geophysicists are able to find ten to twenty times more of these materials, exhaustion is inevitable. Energy use will undoubtedly shift to coal, radioactive minerals, fusion sources and finally to solar power in the long term future. Exploration and discovery of oil, gas, coal, oil shale, tar sands, radioactive minerals and geothermal sources will continue but the most likely places to find these will be at sea or in foreign lands. The high intensity of exploration in the United States definitely points to this direction.

In trying to discover new resources of oil and gas, a fanciful flight into imagination suggests we use the Middle East as a geological model. Then by using plate tectonics to find the push-together zones between continents, the push-together zones between continents and the ocean floor plates, or the delta wedges on the trailing edges of moving continents, we may have a guide to finding ten or more "Middle Easts." None of these appear to be in the United States. No matter how the effort of discovery goes, we will need all of the energy available for our future society.