Natural Resources Look at the following data for crude oil. Region/Country Reserves ( ) Number of Years (Thousand Million Barrels) Reserves will last Middle East United States of America . World . The table gives an estimate of reserves of crude oil (column1).
More important, it also tells us for how many years the stock of crude oil will last if people continue to extract it at the present rate. The reserves would last only years more. This is for the world as a whole. However, different countries face different situations.
Countries like India depend on importing oil from abroad because they do not have enough stocks of their own. If prices of oil increase this becomes a burden for everyone. There are countries like USA which have low reserves and hence want to secure oil through military or economic power. The question of sustainability of development raises many fundamentally new issues about the nature and process of development.
(a) Is crude oil essential for the development process in a country? Discuss. (b) India has to import crude oil. What problems do you anticipate for the country looking at the above situation?
Non-renewable resources are those which will get exhausted after a few years of use. We have a fixed stock on earth which cannot be replenished. We do discover new resources that we did not know of earlier. New sources in this way add to the stock.
However, over time, even this will get exhausted.