JohnDenver wrote:Oil-Finder wrote:The only thing they really care about is that we stop producing and consuming so much oil.
That's not really true either. Sure the folks here talk a lot about how we need to do something about peak oil and carbon emissions. But mostly that's just their lips flapping. Basically, they're all a bunch of hypocrits living energy guzzling lifestyles, like Al Gore. They attack Bush&Cheney for waging a "War for Oil", and then fire up the SUV to go to a Peak Oil meeting.
thuja wrote:Those new projects are wonderful, because they offset the rapid declines happening in the major fields. But as you can see by the flattening of worldwide production, its getting harder and harder for those new projects to keep up with the rapid decline.
If it weren't for these new projects, we would experience a dramatic worldwide decline rate. That was the point of the article I suggested reading.
For example, Cantarell- one of the largest fields in the world, is declining at a 13% rate per year.
There are only a few of these big boys in the world. Another is Burgan in Kuwait (declining) and Ghawar in Saudi Arabia (most likely declining).
We have not made a discovery of a massive field like these for decades. We are now exploting a lot of smaller fields and working on the harder to access and more difficult to refine fields.
All of this leads to some very scary prospects.
Like I said, if it weren''t for those new fields you are talking about we may be looking at decline rates in the double digits.
bl00k wrote:Definition of pollution:
undesirable state of the natural environment being contaminated with harmful substances as a consequence of human activities
'Undesirable'. By whom? Human beings.
Th Earth can't be polluted. We see certain things as 'pollution', we call it pollution because it harms the condition of the Earth as we like to see it because that specific condition is best for us to live in/survive.
It harms overall life support system, essential for humans and non-humans.
Exactly, 'life support system'. The thing that's essential for humans and non-humans. NOT essential for Earth to exist.
Oil-Finder wrote:I don't find it too hard to believe they can find 5 new Saudi Arabia's.
Oil-Finder wrote:Those are just production declines from existing fields, not total worldwide oil production declines. Contrary to popular belief, there *are* new oil production projects coming online.
Yes, but with those new fields -- which are in fact there! -- we'll be looking at decline rates of 0, or even growth. There's not going to be a year where oil from new fields suddenly stops, and you need to incorporate that into your thinking if you want to be a realist. The decline in oil from new fields, when it happens, will be slow and incremental. It's not going to drop from 8mbd one year to 0 for all years thereafter, unless we get hit by an asteroid etc.
JohnDenver wrote:thuja wrote:Those new projects are wonderful, because they offset the rapid declines happening in the major fields. But as you can see by the flattening of worldwide production, its getting harder and harder for those new projects to keep up with the rapid decline.
That last sentence is unsupported opinion. It's not clear that it's getting harder and harder to keep up with decline. It's very common for large multi-country blocks to plateau for decades. North America, for example, has been on an undulating plateau of about 14-15mbd for almost 30 years.
1979 13578kbd
1980 14063
1981 14344
1982 14790
1983 14838
1984 15226
1985 15304
1986 14792
1987 14730
1988 14642
1989 14014
1990 13856
1991 14182
1992 14050
1993 13899
1994 13807
1995 13789
1996 14052
1997 14267
1998 14182
1999 13678
2000 13904
2001 13906
2002 14069
2003 14193
2004 14137
2005 13695
2006 13700
Canada and Mexico kept up just fine with the decline of the U.S. for almost 30 years. So if it was getting "harder and harder", it was clearly doing so very very SLOWLY.
The FSU managed a plateau of about 12 years from 1978-1990 at roughly 12mbd:
1978: 11531
1979: 11805
1980: 12116
1981: 12260
1982: 12330
1983: 12403
1984: 12297
1985: 12040
1986: 12442
1987: 12655
1988: 12601
1989: 12298
1990: 11566
Asia-Pacific has been on a plateau of 6-7mbd for almost 20 years. South/Central America has logged a couple of long plateaus, most recently a plateau of about 6.5mbd for 10 years. Non-Opec has been on a plateau of roughly 35mbd since 1997:
1997 34925
1998 35028
1999 34887
2000 35507
2001 35415
2002 35933
2003 35673
2004 35661
2005 35343
2006 35162
Clearly, it's not so hard to "hold a plateau", so to speak.If it weren't for these new projects, we would experience a dramatic worldwide decline rate. That was the point of the article I suggested reading.
The case where we don't bring on new projects is irrelevant to the real world, for obvious reasons. The only thing that matters is the net decline rate after new projects are added. And the latest word from the really smart people is that the world will decline at a rate of less than 1% for 10 years after peak, and less than 2% for 20 years:
Hubbert Theory says Peak is Slow Squeeze
Technical reading, but well worth the effort thuja, if you really want to bring yourself up to speed on peak oil.For example, Cantarell- one of the largest fields in the world, is declining at a 13% rate per year.
EIA C&C stats for Mexico after its peak in 2004 look like this:
2004: 3383kbd
2005: 3334
2006: 3256
2007: 3126 (9-month average)
That's an annual decline rate of 2.8%, not 13%. Even Mexico (during the collapse of Cantarell!) doesn't collapse like Cantarell. So why do you think that the decline rate of Cantarell has anything to say about the net decline rate of the world? It barely affects Mexico, let alone the world.There are only a few of these big boys in the world. Another is Burgan in Kuwait (declining) and Ghawar in Saudi Arabia (most likely declining).
If Ghawar is declining, it's clearly nothing to worry about because Saudi Arabia has been on a level plateau for most of the last year. I also don't believe that you know whether Ghawar is declining, and thus (again) you are trying to pass off unsupported opinion as evidence.We have not made a discovery of a massive field like these for decades. We are now exploting a lot of smaller fields and working on the harder to access and more difficult to refine fields.
All of this leads to some very scary prospects.
You haven't made any argument, or produced any data, to show that a scary outcome is PROBABLE. The U.S., Canada and Mexico have been operating on 90% small fields for decades, and they're still on the same plateau. All you have is a couple of really tired examples like Cantarell, and a big "What if?" That's it.Like I said, if it weren''t for those new fields you are talking about we may be looking at decline rates in the double digits.
Yes, but with those new fields -- which are in fact there! -- we'll be looking at decline rates of 0, or even growth. There's not going to be a year where oil from new fields suddenly stops, and you need to incorporate that into your thinking if you want to be a realist. The decline in oil from new fields, when it happens, will be slow and incremental. It's not going to drop from 8mbd one year to 0 for all years thereafter, unless we get hit by an asteroid etc.
Oil-Finder wrote:thuja wrote:We have not made a discovery of a massive field like these for decades.
Actually, that's not true.
But we'll save that for another thread.
JohnDenver wrote:For example, Cantarell- one of the largest fields in the world, is declining at a 13% rate per year.
EIA C&C stats for Mexico after its peak in 2004 look like this:
2004: 3383kbd
2005: 3334
2006: 3256
2007: 3126 (9-month average)
That's an annual decline rate of 2.8%, not 13%.
Darwinian wrote:According to the Department of Energy’s Energy Assurance Daily of December 28, Cantrell is declining at 23% per year.
Darwinian wrote:It works like this. IF Cantrell continued to decline at 23% then the output would be, in millions of barrels per day:
2007 1.28
2008 0.99
2009 0.76
2010 0.58
2011 0.45
2012 0.35
2013 0.27
2014 0.21
Of course there is no rule that says that a 23% decline rate must be maintained. It could be 15% or it could go to 30%.
The net decline rate for the Lower 48, about -2%/year year, is probably the best case for the world, since we had intensive drilling and enhanced recovery efforts in the Lower 48.
TheDude wrote:Oil-Finder wrote:I don't find it too hard to believe they can find 5 new Saudi Arabia's.
From Finding Needles in a Haystack by WebHubbleTelescope, who posts here on occasion.
thuja wrote:Oil-Finder wrote:thuja wrote:We have not made a discovery of a massive field like these for decades.
Actually, that's not true.
But we'll save that for another thread.
Ghawar, Burgan, North Sea- these were all discovered back in the 40's, 50's and 60's...
Cantarell was discovered in 76- over 30 years ago. The big boys have been found. Sorry no 70 billion barrel Ghawars undiscovered out there...
. . . "That whole area contains reserves of at least 50 billion barrels, as a conservative estimate," said Marcio Mello, for 26 years a researcher at Petrobras’ technology centre, who is now a partner in the consulting firm HRT Petroleum and head of the Brazilian Association of Petroleum Geologists (ABGP).
The government quotes a figure of 70 billion barrels in the three basins, and some people venture an estimate of over 100 billion barrels. If proven, Brazil’s reserves would approximately match those of high volume exporters like Kuwait and Venezuela, although they could not compare with Saudi Arabia’s. . .
The Bohai Bay in northern China may hold oil reserves equivalent to 20 billion mt (146 billion barrels), with half of it still undiscovered, the official China Daily reported Thursday, citing an upstream expert with the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
The Bohai Bay rim is believed to have about 60 structures similar to the newly found Jidong Nanpu oil field, the report cited CAE's Zhai Guangming as saying. Zhai is also the first manager of the Jidong Oilfield Co. under Chinese state-owned China National Petroleum Corp, according to the report.
The CAE professor, however, also noted that these undiscovered structures would be more difficult to find.
CNPC's publicly-listed business arm PetroChina last Friday said its discovery of the Jidong Nanpu oil field in the shallow waters of the Bohai Bay has a total of four oil-bearing structures. It has confirmed geological reserves of 1.02 billion mt (7.46 billion barrels) of oil equivalent, including 905.6 million mt (6.62 billion barrels) of crude reserves and 140.1 billion cubic meters (4.95 Tcf) of gas.
Price (unpublished) used a more complete database and estimated that the Bakken was capable of generating between 271 and 503 BBbls of oil with an average of 413 BBbls. New estimates of the amount of hydrocarbons generated by the Bakken were presented by Meissner and Banks (2000) and by Flannery and Kraus (2006). The first of these papers tested a newly developed computer model with existing Bakken data to estimate generated oil of 32 BBbls. The second paper used a more sophisticated computer program with extensive data input supplied by the ND Geological Survey and Oil and Gas Division. Early numbers generated from this information placed the value at 200 BBbls later revised to 300 BBbls when the paper was presented in 2006.
...
How much of the generated oil is recoverable remains to be determined. Estimates of 50%, 18%, and 3 to 10% have been published.
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