[Tanada]

This used to be a hotly debated topic around here, I think it is well worth revisiting.

We probably shouldn't put too much stock in it, but IEA some time back came out with 2 decline rate figures :

4.6% "with necessary investments"
6.4% "without necessary investments"

At this point, IMHO even 2-3% is a little optimistic.

We could quickly divide it up along the lines of our old-school doomer-style scale (anyone remember that?)

So we might have :

Anything less than 4% is cornucopian thinking.
4-6% is a moderate rate.
Anything over 6% is doomer territory.

And of course that would be aggregate global oil production decline rate, post peak oil, as opposed to individual oil field decline rates.

This two plus year period of glut has lulled most people into a very complacent attitude. Real global peak is still going to change everything about the way we do business and live, we have just gotten off into distractions during the interlude, especially the period from September 2015 to September 2016 when oil prices were generally below $50/bbl and OPEC wasn't doing anything to try and influence prices.

[Revi]

The IMF has forecast a 1.8% growth rate for the US. They downgraded this from over 2.6% that was forecast. If we end up getting that it will be better than the rest of the world. We are going to see some interesting things pretty soon. The presidential candidates have both promised over 4% growth. Pence even said this in his debate performance. What's going to happen when the growth rate goes negative? It's not going to be pretty. Good luck with that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ke9cElxm-Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hs0UHzcQnM

[ROCKMAN]

Revi - "The IMF has forecast a 1.6% growth rate for the US." A growth of what: oil production, oil imports, oil consumption, GDP, etc.? Thanks.

[Revi]

Economic growth in GDP. They cut the rate based on the Brexit.

The US is down to 1.8% now.

[ROCKMAN]

Mucho thanks Revi.

[sparky]

.
While Marion Hubbert give a symmetrical curve for the rise and fall of production
My most humble opinion is different
the typical decline profile of a field is a steady decrease about half slower than the rise ,
a bit like a wave profile ,
this is often with a sudden burst of production due to secondary recovery .

there is no particular reason to believe global extraction would be much different ,
there would be some further discoveries and while they wouldn't inverse the global trend

that would give a 50Mb/d by the 2070 , or the same number as in the 1970ies ( with three times the population )

[ROCKMAN]

Very rarely does an individual oil well go into rapid decline...IOW "fall off a cliff". Thus it is even more rare for an entire oil field to FOAC. Thus it is even more rare for a trend of fields to FOAC. Thus it is even more rare for the production in an entire basin to FOAC. Thus it is even more rare for an entire state's production to FOAC. Thus it is even more rare for an entire country production to FOAC. Thus it is even more rare for an entire continent to FOAC.

So now let's open the discussion to the possibility of global oil production FOAC. We'll start with folks who predict that happening. First, give a numerical description of what FOAC looks like. Second, show us as many examples in the entire history of the oil age that refutes anything offered in the first paragraph above.

[Tanada]

.
While Marion Hubbert give a symmetrical curve for the rise and fall of production
My most humble opinion is different
the typical decline profile of a field is a steady decrease about half slower than the rise ,
a bit like a wave profile ,
this is often with a sudden burst of production due to secondary recovery .

there is no particular reason to believe global extraction would be much different ,
there would be some further discoveries and while they wouldn't inverse the global trend

that would give a 50Mb/d by the 2070 , or the same number as in the 1970ies ( with three times the population )

While that sounds great in theory I think there is a problem. Of the top seven largest oil fields/trends they were discovered in 1917 (Venezuela) 1927 (Iran) 1937 (Kuwait) 1948 (Saudi Arabia) 1951 (Kuwait/Saudi Border) 1958 (Iran) 1976 (Mexico). The newest of them started pumping forty years ago!

To say I find it unlikely they will still be producing significant oil sixty years from now would be putting it mildly. Cantrell in Mexico was found in 1976 and has been in serious decline for twelve years and is producing just 15 percent of its 2004 peak production today. Every field is different and Cantrell is off shore making it more expensive to produce, but how likely is it Ghawar will still be producing 2 MM/bbl/d in 2076? It was found in 1948 and has been the workhorse Saudi field for close to 70 years already! The rest of those middle east field are all older than Cantrell, how many of them do you realistically expect to have serious production in 2076? Lose all of those fields and making up for just that shortfall will make it hard for new discoveries to maintain a decline rate like you are hoping for.

[ROCKMAN]

T - As always different folks have different definition of how much "significant production" might be. For old fields with high water cuts the practical production will hinge on production cost more then volume.

Cantrell is unique amongst bigger fields which are typically water drive reservoirs...a long depletion history of "brown stained water". The gas cap expansion drive at Cantrell works just fine. Until the N2/oil contact is pushed down to the level of the perforations in each producing well. IOW they don't "water out"...they "gas out". If they keep producing it pulls too much N2 out which is counterproductive to pumping it in at the top of the structure. BTW the N2 generating system n the field produces more N2 then all the other extraction systems on the planet COMBINED.

[sparky]

.
there is no reason to believe the exploitation curve is symmetrical ,
All the oil wells I'm aware didn't produce then reached a max , while their production kept going ( down )

The Drake Well is located in Cherrytree Township, Venango County in northwestern Pennsylvania,drilled in 1859
it produced a peak of 30 barrels a day , now a bit less than 1 a day ,
the aggregate production post peak is much Larger than the production during the rise
interestingly , it was a financial bust , thus starting the pattern for the industry .

the problem is how hard the well is worked , that was the case for Cantarell ,
if they had nursed it , its production profile would have been better
Aramco spokesman has said they treat Ghawar as gently as a grand mother

old fields keep producing forever ,
offshore wells ,of course ,reach a point when maintenance in a marine environment make it a loosing proposition

[ROCKMAN]

T - Some where you asked how the EIA distinguishes "tight gas" from "shale gas". Just stumbled into this...the EIA's own words:

"Tight gas became a separate wellhead pricing category when the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 was passed and established an incentive to produce tight gas resources when natural gas resources were believed to be scarce. When wellhead natural gas prices were deregulated, tight gas lost its specific market-related definition and now refers to natural gas produced from low-permeability sandstone and carbonate reservoirs."

IOW as I pointed out: such definitions by the EIA bean counters have nothing to do with hz drilling or frac'ng. Their classification is based solely on the nature of the porosity (i.e. fractures in UNCONVENTIONAL reservoirs and low permeability in CONVENTIONAL reservoirs. The NGPA of '78 was a brain fart of the govt to control the normal market dynamics of NG. Led to weird sh*t like the price of NG coming from a RECENTLY drilled well at 15,100' being significantly higher then an older well producing from the same depth or a RECENTLY drilled well at 14,900'. Same pricing game played with a low perm sand drilled recently and from "old" wells. And then there were different pricing rules for interstate production, intrastate production and imported NG.

Eventually the govt couldn't deny how screwed up they made the process and rescinded the rules. But as the above excerpt shows they still hang on to some of the categorization. They still have a problem: "shale gas" can be produced from fractures in a hz well drilled in shale formation. But what do they call production from from fractures in a sandstone formation? BTW that's not uncommon in the Permian Basin. Also understand that they also call NG produced in oil wells in the shales as "tight gas" so that number includes a lot more then just the Marcellus et al.

Also according to the EIA of the 14 tcf from "shale gas and tight oil plays" about 5 tcf comes "tight" reservoirs. But what's truly amazing howcwrong the EIA can be even with very shot term predictions. From 2015:

"As a result of growth in production, domestic production is soon expected to surpass domestic consumption of natural gas, and by 2018 the United States becomes a net exporter of natural gas for the first time since the 1950s. By 2040, net exports of natural gas reach 7.5 Tcf, which is 18% of total U.S. production."

Instead domestic NG production (according to the same EIA) has not increased but appears to have begun a decreasing trend:

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9070us2M.htm

[sparky]

.
there is a slight decrease if one look at the monthly graph , the yearly numbers tell a somewhat different story .

[ROCKMAN]

sparky - True but you don't have a data point for 2016...yet. But you see a hint of where it's going based on the monthly stats. Time will tell.

[Revi]

We'll know if we are slipping off the plateau, or are still up there soon. We are headed into a very interesting time.

[AdamB]

We'll know if we are slipping off the plateau, or are still up there soon. We are headed into a very interesting time.

That's what people said about peak oil a decade back. I don't think they meant another millions of barrels a day and a glut that resulted in real gasoline prices resembling the early 1970's. And there is a difference between a geologic, or even sine wave based oi production decline, and a supply response to price, such as the world has been experiencing with oil for a few years now, and we finally might be achieving in natural gas. It took long enough, natural gas production increases being quite resilient to price decreases.

Supply elasticity to price is something to set an economists head awhirl.