[ROCKMAN]

Here's that link again:

Giant Oil Fields?

[pedalling_faster]

The main difference in the different scenarios is the peak production level, where the worst case scenario peaks at just above 83Mbpd in 2008 while the best case scenario reaches a peak level of 94Mbpd in 2013 (figure 9.4). Thus the time span is only 5 years but the production level span is 11 Mbpd."

i know it's important for qualified people to study things like this and report back to those of us who didn't get past the first class in geophysics.

but the 83/ 94 debate seems not very useful, except for helping CERA bill consulting revenues as they go about re-assuring nervous clients.

there was a data point of about 74 mbpd, crude oil production, and 84 mpbd, reported by Matt Simmons & Deffeyes in 2005.

then we have an undulating plateau, where companies like Saudi Aramco pump harder than ever to maintain production (i'm not saying that's bad, i like for the trucks to bring food to the supermarket). and maybe a few data-points where people can say, "see ! see ! 2005 wasn't the Peak."

i can only read a small subset of what the professional geo's produce, so i stick to Simmons, the Hirsch report, the Deffeyes presentations, updates at the Oil-drum, etc.

94 mbpd in 2013 ?

is this one of those numbers that organizations produce so they can stand in front of the United Nations and argue for some preferred approach to fossil fuel depletion, you know, making one of those "don't worry, everything's under control" type presentations ?

so i guess this board now has a Rockman and a Roccman.

[zberry]

Thanks! Uppsala is the university of Kjell Aleklett, ASPO and Professor of Physics
His presenation at the 2005 National Acadamies Workshop on Oil Supply, Demand and Peaking in Production titled "From the Outside Looking In" was brilliant. A tour de force!

National Acadmies Workshop on Oil

[ROCKMAN]

pedalling_faster,

I know all the different projections folksthrow around can be confusing. The reason I encouraged this thread was the approach this Swede used. He actually studied all the major oil fields in the world in order to get an accurate characterzation as possible. He still has to make a variety of assumptions to reach his conclusions but he has much more concrete info in his model then I've ever seen elsewhere.

Keep an eye on the thread and see what the critcs and prisers have to say.

I gather you think his most optimistic projection of peak production reaching at 94 million BO per day of oil in 2013 as good news. It's actually far from it. The pie eyed optimistists out there are saying "don't worry...we'll be producing 130 million BO per day in 2035". If the growth of oil consumption continues as most currently project then by 2013, if the Swede is right, it won't be just a question of higher oil prices but an actual shortage. In other words, even if you can afford the price it some oil requirements won't be meet for someone.

I f you read the Swede's thesis you'l see he doesn't predict the future as good or bad. He just says his work reliably shows oil production will follow a certain path.

Hang in there and don't let any technobabble frustrate you.

[Revi]

I like it. We can reasonably plan what's going to happen now. I think we are on a plateau until around 2010 or 2012, but who knows? This is a great find. We can actually plan what's going to happen now.

Peak oil is a reality.

[DantesPeak]

I like it. We can reasonably plan what's going to happen now. I think we are on a plateau until around 2010 or 2012, but who knows? This is a great find. We can actually plan what's going to happen now.

Peak oil is a reality.

Thanks for the report.

When you further consider falling energy per barrel extracted, and higher demand, we may have already crossed into the twilight zone of perpetual oil/product supply problems.

[AirlinePilot]

This kind of supports my own conclusions that things will start going downhill inside of 2-3 years. It seems as most of us who have followed this will attest, as time goes on the negative news has become the more accurate harbinger of what actually transpires. I'm thinking we start off the plateau we are on sometime between 2009-2011. After that, without real action the potential for ugly things gets very large. Right now I think it is going to be possible to hold on to the past and play the blame game, but that wont last very long. Typically we will waste precious time doing exactly that.

The bottom line is it appears we have a bit more time to prep than some here may have thought.

[rockdoc123]

Several years ago I posted somewhere on this site my projection for peak oil which was based on data from WoodMac and IHS Energy along with a bit of editing based on my own knowledge in some of the projects. That analysis gave a peak somewhere between 2012 and 2015 so I'm not surprised by the results of the report. That being said something that is being missed in the analysis I believe is not what the actual peak is but rather what the plateau looks like. Almost all of the assumptions that go into the WoodMac and IHS Energy views on reserves and production deal with 2P volumes. Little in the way of credit is given to "technical" reserves as WoodMac refers to them. These could be from field extensions or from improved recovery from existing wells. Improving recovery factors is definitely something that can be done and with increasing technology we may see more and more reserve growth in the future. What this would do is not increase actual peak but rather prolong the plateau to something that looks rather bumpy with a slow but steady decline followed by rapid accelarated decline once recovery factors have been maximized.

[evilgenius]

Several years ago I posted somewhere on this site my projection for peak oil which was based on data from WoodMac and IHS Energy along with a bit of editing based on my own knowledge in some of the projects. That analysis gave a peak somewhere between 2012 and 2015 so I'm not surprised by the results of the report. That being said something that is being missed in the analysis I believe is not what the actual peak is but rather what the plateau looks like. Almost all of the assumptions that go into the WoodMac and IHS Energy views on reserves and production deal with 2P volumes. Little in the way of credit is given to "technical" reserves as WoodMac refers to them. These could be from field extensions or from improved recovery from existing wells. Improving recovery factors is definitely something that can be done and with increasing technology we may see more and more reserve growth in the future. What this would do is not increase actual peak but rather prolong the plateau to something that looks rather bumpy with a slow but steady decline followed by rapid accelarated decline once recovery factors have been maximized.

Don't techniques that vastly increase production in existing fields also make for a substantial dropoff in production a few short years later? If this is so I wonder what the best solution is for the future? If we only need a burst because we want to implement solutions that we can roll out in under five years, well, yes. If we have no viable alternatives is it best to increase production or eke it out at a steady but declining rate? I don't know what the best answer is. What does everybody think?

[TheDude]

Glad this study is getting some attention here!

Here's that link again:

Giant Oil Fields?

I assume you mean this page from ASPO.

Don't techniques that vastly increase production in existing fields also make for a substantial dropoff in production a few short years later?

Simmons used Yibal as a sort of poster child for EOR leading to a crash in production. Enhanced Oil Recovery Scoping Study examines three US fields that have had CO2 floods. From what I hear the effects of EOR can be as varied as, well, the flow characteristics of the fields themselves. Rock or ROCK will no doubt give more substantial answers; here are search results at TOD for EORas well.

Cantarell lets us know that giant fields can really keel over! FreddyH is quite confident that unconventional can take us to where we want to go, his concern is above-ground factors. But while I'm not about to speculate about what's going on in KSA, it's a pure act of faith to assume that their fields are safe from decline - we just don't know, and should plan for the worst.

I would like to see a Congressional mandate that IOCs spend some of their windfall on EOR projects, assuming our elected schmucks eventually figure out that the IOCs don't actually own much of the world's oil - or cease posturing for their enraged constituency.

What are WoodMac's forecasts like? Haven't seen the like, are they built into their Global Economic Model? Same with IHS - are their models the same as CERA's?

[ROCKMAN]

evilgenius,

You're right...some techniques (horizontal drilling) can have great intial flow rates but then often decline rapidly. Others (CO2 injection) will often start slow but then show steady but at relatively slow rates.

In general though, it's important to know how almost all oil companies (especially publicly owned one) looks at economics. The ultimate volume of recovered oil isn't nearly as important as the rate of return on the investment. And the ROR hangs on the initial flow rate more than anything else. This true for enhanced recovery projects as well as all the resource plays you hear about now.

Take the new resource play in the Bakken Shale as an example. Vertical completions just don't deliver flow rates sufficient to make the economics work. It may come as a little surprise but the ultimate recover of a proposed well is not considered a major factor by the oil industry. I've been running economic analysis of drilling deals for over 30 years. The key economic consideration (beside the probability of success) is the rate of return on the investment. And this is tied directly to the cash flow from the well. In other words, how quickly will the net production pay back the investment. Even though drilling costs have increased greatly, horizontal completions can payout in 12 to 18 months yielding a 30% to 100% rate of return. It may sound odd but if an operator had to choose between two prospects where one recovered twice as much oil as the other they would choose the lower ultimate recovery project if the rate of return were significantly better. This is particularly true of public companies who are judge quarterly and not over the life of their production stream.

Dude ... really don't need the Feds pushing EOR. For some of the majors it's about all they have left. A story I've seldom seen is ExxonMobil latest statements regarding a major shift in their biz plan. They had been dumping ten's of billions of $'s into international exploration looking for the big ones. They have announced that due to high costs and ever decreasing opportunities they are shifting their empahsis to enhancing production from their existing assets. Some of their oldest fields from the 50's and 60's still hold huge amounts of oil. But the bad news is that they have working EOR on those fields for decades.

Given the high price of oil this statement sound contradictory but the exploration/production side of ExxonMobil is a dying business. Not that there isn't a lot of oil left to find but because EM is so big and produces so much that they've reached a point where they can't replace their declining rates. For the last two years both EM and Shell have seen the average daily production decrease year -to - year. I believe this is the first time that has happened in over 50 years. These companies have gotten so big that adding net values year-to-year is almost impossible. In a way, it's a similar story to what we're seeing in worldwide oil production: we're producing such a huge volume that it's not possible to replace that volume with new production.

Since EM can't find enough places to drill new wells they are shifting to fields they already own. It might help stablize the bleeding for a while but they are on an unending downward spiral on production rates....and this is a death march for a public E&P company in the long run

[TheDude]

For the last two years both EM and Shell have seen the average daily production decrease year -to - year. I believe this is the first time that has happened in over 50 years.

Wow! Now that's a story in of itself.

I own a little XOM and it's startling how dependent they still are on their upstream business. And now they're selling all their service stations. Triage, anybody?

Perhaps after the 22nd the majors will get more of a chance to work in conjunction with NOCs. What in sam scratch is that meeting going to be about, anyway? More meaningless press releases? Earthshaking admissions of fraud or limitation?

[ROCKMAN]

Dude,

Have you dug into ExxonMobil's asset sheets? I'm not sure how they are spead now but I was shocked to see (about 15 years ago) that XOM's real estate assets were worth (at least on paper) many times what their oil&gas assets were valued. Few people realize how many developments are owned by XOM because they don't use the ExxonMobil name. I know Fairfield is one of their big subs.

[Vogelzang]

Imagine using these to provide heat for oil sands processing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower

[cube]

....
Abstract
The report Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management, by Robert L. Hirsch et al., concludes that Peak Oil is going to happen and that worldwide large-scale mitigation efforts are necessary to avoid its possible devastating effects for the world economy.
....

The best mitigation plan is to use the free-market.

[mos6507]

Imagine using these to provide heat for oil sands processing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower

Using solar power to process fossil fuels is patently stupid. Better to use the solar power directly and skip the eventual CO2 emissions, but since you don't believe in global warming, I understand your fascination with this.

[strider3700]

Northern alberta isn't exactly known for it's amazing sunny weather. I distinctly remember the bitter cold and meters of snow on the ground more then the sun.

[Sys1]

Our wisefull brightfull civilization decided yesterday to extract uranium with oil fueled trucks and machines. With this uranium, and much more oil, we will produce huge nuclear plants with witch we will make a lot of energy to extract crappy oil with wich we will fuel huger trucks huge like world trade center with which we will extract more uranium from pluto and send it to earth with a warp drive constructed from the reverse engineering work on Roswell's spaceship.
Until this time, we suggest you to buy a horse and learn to grow food in your garden. Thank you, and Merry Christmess!

[Homesteader]

Imagine using these to provide heat for oil sands processing.

What does this statement and masturbation have in common?

[NoahsDove]

Anyone into Art Bell? Mayans believe the world will come to an end by 2012. Prophetic or what? According to Mayan calender, this is the fifth and the final cycle of mankind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_calendar