Joined: Jun 15, 2007 Posts: 566 Location: St.Albert, AB
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 3:10 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
I sleep in a race car bed but correct me if I'm wrong...
Why have we not considered the growth of demand? We are experiencing a growth in demand (in both pace and size) beyond anything we have seen in all human history.
If the world economy is forced to rely on 5-7 year project time lines, what are the prospects of major supply shortfalls? What if these projects are nationalized and left out of the world market?
I understand that projects which were started three years ago will come online in three more, and projects started six years ago will come online next year or the following...that's fine. But we have forgotten that our goal is not this magic 84 million barrel target (we can't simply talk of countering hyper depletion in our major elephant fields), the target is to react to demand as if there were no natural constraints.
With hyper growth in China and India, the goal is to insure that supply can grow faster than the speed of demand. The oil is becoming more expensive to extract (as stated, with a growth of 16% in costs, by Exxon, this clearly does not match inflation and indicates increasing costs) and it is not coming from our traditional, and reliable, handful of elephant fields as we have seen in the past.
With hyper growth in demand, and the outsourcing of supply from our traditional handful of elephant fields to an array of smaller fields, it should be acknowledged that we are moving to simply more unstable territory.
Instead of having one swing producer and one massive elephant field to pick up the slack, we're having to rely on a wider array of smaller fields (or at least, fields with lower flow rates) and less guarantee in supply.
I know these numbers do not solve the problem, but I will acknowledge that it is a start.
If we see a growth in supply match and grow at the same pace of demand I will be a happy boy, but it should be recognized that we are moving into a time of greater instability. With the massive size and pace in demand, finding the swing production (such as during a major hurricane) will be that much more difficult.
How can we assume our safety when we are still unsure at the growth of demand (within the next 15 years, especially if the US goes into recession and of what magnitude) ?
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:16 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
mkwin wrote:
Quote:
guess the easy oil must be gone or am I missing someting.
You are missing a massive point. It takes on average 7 years to get a new field developed and producing oil. These discoveries will not be producing until 2014-2015.
2008 will a very large increase in capacity spured by the higher prices since 2004. Almost 7.5 million barrels of new capacity. Compared with the average of 3 million for 2003-2006. I would not be suprised is oil falls below $80 towards the end of the year or early 2009.
Hence my mention of "easy oil" it might take the Brazil offshore find through layers of salt 7+ years to develop.
Im sure Ghawar, Cantrell did not take 7 years to develop to get 1+ mil bpd.
But your point is taken it takes a long time to bring new projects on line.
Thankfully oil is trading at nearly $100 bbl which should do two things 1. reduce demand 2. increase incentives to find new oil and alternatives.
Overall I think we are doomed. In the sense that we used to think we could keep growing our economy and affluence forever. I think we are headed for a powerdown.
Lets hope this years oil production increases and that a similarly impressive amount of discoveries are found. Same for Nat gas. _________________ "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:56 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
Smudger wrote:
this is great work and inportant to have it, but I think we need to look behind some of the headlines. The obvious one is Jack where the links goes to an early news link. It doesn't refer to the fact that since those days in 2006 jack 2 has been regarded as having a lot less recoverable oil. i.e. the 3-15bn related to the whole region and NOT simply Jack. Clearly this on its own puts a big hole in the 2006 figure.
Not trying to simply get the numbers down' just wanting them to be right so we can relie on them.
cheers!
You are correct about Jack, I had forgotten about that.
However, in both the 2006 and 2007 lists I only include 1 other GoM discovery. I'll do a bit of legwork to find out if that one would technically be "included" in the 3-15 billion barrel figure I cited for Jack. If it is, I'll subtract the amount of that other discovery from the total. If not, I'll leave it as-is.
Otherwise, every time I come across a new GoM discovery I will first try to find out if that's in the same area cited in the 3-15 billion barrel figure for the Jack "area." If it is, I won't include it. If it's in some other area of the GoM, I'll add it.
Last edited by Oil-Finder on Wed Jan 02, 2008 5:12 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 5:03 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
malcomatic_51 wrote:
Oil-Finder wrote:
....
However, given the information I have just presented above, here is what the chart should really look like, using the mean value of the volume of discoveries at the bottom of each of the 2 above posts.
We await news in 2008, 2009 and subsequent years.
Correct me if I am wrong, but you are not comparing like with like. The historic discoveries chart shows recoverable reserves backdated with upgrades (P90? so far as I understand). Whereas your data is Oil In Place. There is no way of knowing how much OIP will actually turn into recoverable reserves. It looks like you need to divide your bars by about 3, which of course would give us what we already know, that discoveries are less than a third of consumption.
Are you certain those big bars from the 50's through the 80's only include "recoverable" amounts from discoveries? I'm not so sure. The source of that chart says nothing about whether those old discoveries are OIP or recoverable. How would they know how much of each discovery was recoverable? If someone discovered a 10-billion-barrel field in 1955 and initially thought 20% of it was recoverable, then later on increased technology rose that to, say, 50% or 70%, what number would they use?
I think those old bars are probably OIP, and if I'm right, my methodology is consistent with the old figures.
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 5:17 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
Well after doing a bit of research, it looks like the Tonga West discovery I cited in late 2007 is, in fact, in the same area as Chevron/Devon's Jack wells. So I will subtract 100 million barrels from 2007.
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1988 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:10 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
Oil-Finder wrote:
I think those old bars are probably OIP, and if I'm right, my methodology is consistent with the old figures.
I'm fairly certain that they are proven reserves. it would make it a useless chart, otherwise, since it would bear no relation to the amount of oil we have used or can use. In fact, I'm sure I've seen a chart of OOIP numbers, which was quite different from the chart you reproduced, with a peak of nearer 140 billion barrels in 1948, rather than the 55 billion shown here. As peaking estimates refer to URR, simply showing the OOIP numbers is of little use.
Also, though you've put a lot of excellent effort into this, an even more useful set of figures would include more recent estimates of recoverable oil (someof your links were over 2 years old) and of estimated production starts.
By the way, you should remove the 2005 discovery from the 2006 data. Just because the announcement was late in 2005, there is no reason to shift one year's data into the next year's data. Similarly, you show a set of discoveries between 2004 and 2006 as being all in 2006.
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1988 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:15 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
Oil-Finder wrote:
contrary to peak oiler propaganda, there really are substantial oil discoveries being made
Not really. These discoveries make little difference to the URR figures (which estimate undiscovered, also) used to estimate the peak year. For example, a 100 billion barrel discovery (if it was additional to any estimate of discovery) would only push the peak out by a year or two (assuming no peak before full production was reached).
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:38 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
TonyPrep wrote:
Oil-Finder wrote:
I think those old bars are probably OIP, and if I'm right, my methodology is consistent with the old figures.
I'm fairly certain that they are proven reserves. it would make it a useless chart, otherwise, since it would bear no relation to the amount of oil we have used or can use. In fact, I'm sure I've seen a chart of OOIP numbers, which was quite different from the chart you reproduced, with a peak of nearer 140 billion barrels in 1948, rather than the 55 billion shown here. As peaking estimates refer to URR, simply showing the OOIP numbers is of little use.
Also, though you've put a lot of excellent effort into this, an even more useful set of figures would include more recent estimates of recoverable oil (someof your links were over 2 years old) and of estimated production starts.
By the way, you should remove the 2005 discovery from the 2006 data. Just because the announcement was late in 2005, there is no reason to shift one year's data into the next year's data. Similarly, you show a set of discoveries between 2004 and 2006 as being all in 2006.
If you can find me a chart showing OOIP discoveries and demonstrate that it's significantly different from the chart I showed, I would be more than happy to see it.
As for production starts - sorry, this is enough work already! The point of this thread is to find out how much oil has been discovered, not to determine exactly when it will reach market, and a zillion other details. I do have other things to do, you know.
As for the December 28, 2005 discovery, I will leave it in place. There are certainly discoveries made in 2006 that I missed, so this one would make up for it.
As for the 2004-2006 drillings in Libya (which I believe is the one you are referring to), there is no way for me to separate out the amounts drilled in wells in 2004, 2005 and 2006, because the announcement was made in 2006 and lumped them all together.
This is true for all of these: The dates of the "discoveries" are the dates that the resource sizes were announced. There is no other way to do it. If Shell or some other oil company announces they've found X barrels of oil in 4 wells drilled over the past 3 years in a certain area, and announce that on January 15, 2008, it goes as as 2008 discovery. There's no other way for me to date them.
Joined: Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 3401 Location: 3 miles NW of Champoeg, Republic of Cascadia
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:01 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
Oil-Finder wrote:
If you can find me a chart showing OOIP discoveries and demonstrate that it's significantly different from the chart I showed, I would be more than happy to see it.
Of course it would differ. Ghawar's OOIP was 170 bbls, 60 bbls URR, from a 70s audit. The field was discovered in 1948 and most likely accounts for most all of one of the bars on the graph. Some big finds in the late 40s!
Didn't think of OOIP vs URR at all - thanks for clearing that up, malcomatic. Seems we are having an upsurge of discovery at any rate, just not dramatically so. _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
Could you slide your shorts down please?
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1988 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:05 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
I'll look for that other OOIP chart but don't you agree that, without figures for proven reserves, a OOIP chart says nothing about how much oil is available for our use? However, it does show that there is considerable activity in trying to replace declines.
I'm confused as to why you continue to think it's OK to included some of the 2005 discoveries in the 2006 data. If you are so certain that it compensates for missed 2006 data, then simply put the missing 2006 data in, instead. If you don't know what the missing data is, then you can't be certain that you've missed anything.
Lastly, if you can't separate out discoveries in a pack of announcements then, if the total find is very large (say, several hundred million barrels) try some simple formula for splitting it into the correct years. Otherwise it could distort the overall picture. I was actually referring to the 730 million barrels of UK North Sea discoveries.
I still think this is good work, though, despite its limited usefulness.
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:11 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
TheDude wrote:
Of course it would differ. Ghawar's OOIP was 170 bbls, 60 bbls URR, from a 70s audit. The field was discovered in 1948 and most likely accounts for most all of one of the bars on the graph. Some big finds in the late 40s!
Did they find all 170 bbl's in Ghawar all at once? I highly doubt it, it doesn't usually work that way. In all probability they first thought it was some smaller amount, then after additional exploration some years later they found out it was even bigger, and added piecemeal to the size of the "discovery."
^
There are several big bars in the late 40's and late 50's which, added together, could account for various additions to Ghawar's estimated size.
So I'm still not convinced that that chart does not show OOIP discoveries. Once again, if you can find me a chart showing OOIP discoveries, I'd be happy to see it.
Last edited by Oil-Finder on Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:29 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:22 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
TonyPrep wrote:
I'm confused as to why you continue to think it's OK to included some of the 2005 discoveries in the 2006 data. If you are so certain that it compensates for missed 2006 data, then simply put the missing 2006 data in, instead.
There were articles I found on oil discoveries which I could not access because they were hidden behind subscription walls, and/or by the time I found them their links had expired. A few of those I've been able to find in other articles, but not all of them.
And there are discoveries which have been made but which I did not catch. Given the methodology I'm using (simply going to certain web sites and doing a google-news search), the odds are fantastically high that lots of small oil discoveries don't make the press anywhere.
This is an imperfect methodology and I admit it. Use the figures I post as a general snapshot, not as a scientifically-precise accounting. Given my methodology, there is no way to get a scientifically-precise accounting.
Joined: Oct 16, 2004 Posts: 1425 Location: Appalachian Foothills of Virginia
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:36 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
Oil-Finder wrote:
If you can find me a chart showing OOIP discoveries and demonstrate that it's significantly different from the chart I showed, I would be more than happy to see it.
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:47 pm Post subject: Re: Catalog of recent oil discoveries
skyemoor wrote:
Oil-Finder wrote:
If you can find me a chart showing OOIP discoveries and demonstrate that it's significantly different from the chart I showed, I would be more than happy to see it.
Well I'm not sure I understand that chart, and you don't have a source. It also seems to include seismic and surface exploration "discoveries" which I am not including in my own accounting. Believe me, if I included those, I could find you a lot more discoveries than what I've shown.
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