Another bit of fun

[JohnN]

I see that we have some real calculating types on this forum, so following on from “Bit of Fun” perhaps someone might like to wrap their brain round this one.
If the mass of the earth is reduced to an “eggshell” (a hollow sphere), which is, say, 20 miles thick, and just 5% of that mass is oil, how much oil have we got left – maximum!?
I’ve no idea if the figures of 20 miles as the max depth for oil, or 5% are anywhere near correct but I can help a bit with the information that 100 cu metres is equivalent to 852 barrels (US) of oil. (See ‘The Conversion Site’).
Oh, I did try to work it out myself but my calculator couldn’t cope and I got confused with decimal points.
Might give us some solid oil facts to work on instead of all the guessing!

[Ian in Cumbria]

3.48 x10 to the power 18 barrels. That is 3.48 million, million, million barrels. (I think!). Which reminds me - when I was a lad a billion was a million million. It now seems to be a thousand million. A trillion was a billion billion but now it seems to be a thousand billion which makes a trillion a heck of a lot less than it used to be. My head hurts......

Regards

Ian