THE 'How much oil is remaining?' Thread (merged)

[shortonoil]

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Here is the problem with US Geological survey's estimate. The world’s conventional oil production presently has an ERoEI of about 17 - 18 to 1, and falling. The ERoEI on gasoline is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-6 to 1. Meaning that the ERoEI loses 12 to 13 points in the processing and transportation of the crude. If we start pumping, squeezing and mining sources, such as the tar sands, that have ERoEI's of less than 10, we will get negative energy returns on the finished products. The question is not about how much oil is in the ground, (presently world oil reserves are about 6 trillion barrels), the question is, how much energy is available from the oil. This is simple Thermodynamics 101, First and Second law stuff. You would think that these buffoons could figure that out!

http://www.oilcrisis.com/cleveland/OilAndCulture.pdf

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[rwwff]

Negative energy return is however, economically OK; as long as the energy inputs into the system come from fixed, non-transportables like coal and nuclear. The point of tar sands and all the others isn't to get energy, it is to get liquid energy.

[ClubOfRomeII]

Exxon is relying on the US Geological survey's 2000 results for their 2 trillion barrels remaining estimate. Those results have been roundly ridiculed as vastly optimistic, and have proved to be wildly inaccurate in the 6 years they have been released.

The USGS study you reference was for undiscovered resources ( including growth of existing reserves ). Not what is remaining in discovered accumulations or current reserve estimates.

The results are worldwide and probabilistic in their answer, and are used by companies like Exxon because it is the most thorough geologically based study done on the planet in the last decade?

Unless of course you have another geologic study which involved smarter people, more of them, working longer hours for more years than it took to the produce the 2000 USGS report?

[pstarr]

the guy is head of exxon or mobile or whatever and probably knows nothing about petroleum. He is a 'manager' a 'delegator,' someone with vision or understands the hard work of consensus-building and team leadership.

so who gives a rat's ass about URR and Proven and Probable and all that other pointy-headed snob stuff. that is for engineers and we buy and sell engineers like paper lanterns.

18 holes anyone?

[ClubOfRomeII]

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Here is the problem with US Geological survey's estimate. The world’s conventional oil production presently has an ERoEI of about 17 - 18 to 1, and falling. The ERoEI on gasoline is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-6 to 1. Meaning that the ERoEI loses 12 to 13 points in the processing and transportation of the crude. If we start pumping, squeezing and mining sources, such as the tar sands, that have ERoEI's of less than 10, we will get negative energy returns on the finished products. The question is not about how much oil is in the ground, (presently world oil reserves are about 6 trillion barrels), the question is, how much energy is available from the oil. This is simple Thermodynamics 101, First and Second law stuff. You would think that these buffoons could figure that out!

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I've never seen the USGS even mention EROEI, could you post a reference to them saying anything about it?

And current world reserves of oil are maybe a trillion barrels, tops? Otherwise you would be suggesting that we've used a trillion, have another 6 trillion to go, and somehow Peak which happens around the 50% line isn't going to be reached for another couple of decades. Which most people around here would disagree with.

Unless you have different reserve numbers than those which pop up around here or at the Oildrum?

[BigTex]

Here is another nice analogy:

There are three taps in a bar. The first tap is Budweiser and it costs $1.00 for a large glass. The second tap is Dom Perignon and it costs $10.00 for a small glass. The third tap is water from the Spring of Life and it costs $10,000 per drop.

There is 10 times as much Bud as Dom Perignon and there is 10 times as much Dom Perignon as there is Spring of Life Water.

We are just now finishing off the Bud kegs (easy to find onshore stuff) and getting into the Dom Perignon (the deepwater and sour stuff). Soon we will get into the spring of life stuff (shale, Antartctica, the Moon, etc.).

We'll go broke way before we run out.

[traz]

^^Exactly^^

We might have plenty of oil left, but it's expensive oil.

Oil that can't be sold cheaply.

Oil that won't be bought because no-one will be able to afford it.

[Free]

It's kind of like being trapped in the desert. You have 100 gallons of fresh water, enough for quite a while. But you can only get the water out at a very slow rate (say a mL per hour). That massive amount of water won't do you any good if you can't get it out faster, now will it?

This the best analogy I've seen to describe the fundamental issue of Peak Oil. Not heard of it before.

I absolutely second that.

To illustrate the madness of the "human ingenuity will save us"- attitude I myself used to liken it to a group of people wandering around in the desert, with a limited water reserve. The PO guy asks to ration the water in case they don't find new water for a long time, while the cornucopian says:"Don't worry, it will rain!"

[emersonbiggins]

The PO guy asks to ration the water in case they don't find new water for a long time, while the cornucopian says:"Don't worry, it will rain!"

Worse yet, the cornucopian admits not that he is in a desert, but rather he's in a sugar cane/palm oil plantation-to-be...

[Free]

The PO guy asks to ration the water in case they don't find new water for a long time, while the cornucopian says:"Don't worry, it will rain!"

Worse yet, the cornucopian admits not that he is in a desert, but rather he's in a sugar cane/palm oil plantation-to-be...

I guess that's after the effects of dehydration already have set in...

[joewp]

I guess that's after the effects of dehydration already have set in...

That's a plausible explanation for Lorenzo's posts.

[shortonoil]

ClubOfRomeII said:

I've never seen the USGS even mention EROEI, could you post a reference to them saying anything about it?

Well gee, surpass -surpass, the USGS has never said anything about ERoEI. Why would they be concerned with a thermodynamic problem? The market will solve all problems. When the free market equates to God, you have no problem. When it takes more energy to get the oil out of the ground than you get out of the oil, no problem, the market will solve it????

ClubOfRomeII said:

Unless you have different reserve numbers than those which pop up around here or at the Oildrum?

The estimate of 2 trillion barrels is for extractable oil. Total oil on the planet, which is mostly not extractable due to ERoEI considerations, is somewhere around 6 trillion.


rwwff said:

Negative energy return is however, economically OK; as long as the energy inputs into the system come from fixed, on-transportables like coal and nuclear. The point of tar sands and all the others isn't to get energy, it is to get liquid energy.

Now where in hell are we going to get enough coal and uranium each year to replace the 4.7 X 10^16 BTUs that is provided to us gratis, oil? Ask CERA, no problem, all we would need is 1.5 X 10^9 shovels!


pstarr said:

the guy is head of exxon or mobile or whatever and probably knows nothing about petroleum. He is a 'manager' a 'delegator,' someone with vision or understands the hard work of consensus-building and team leadership.

so who gives a rat's ass about URR and Proven and Probable and all that other pointy-headed snob stuff. that is for engineers and we buy and sell engineers like paper lanterns.

18 holes anyone?

Thank god for one sane man! I hope it is enough?

[erb]

Let get this underway then

I cant wait to drink oil because all the water was used up to extract the oil from tar sands

With the United States domestic decline in oil production, it is important to research possible tar sand production in America (Alaska). Our consumption continues to increase, as well as our dependence on oil imports. Today, about 59% of the oil consumed in the United States are imported. The deposits of oil sands (oil shale) in the United States are massive. The processing of oil shale has gone through cycles of development and commercialization, all without achieving a competitive cost of production. As well, tar sands are processed on a limited basis. An engineering study was done between the University of Alabama and the Department of Energy. This engineering study provided a preliminary design of a commercial processing facility to beneficiate 39,956 tons per day of run-of -mine eastern oil shale to produce 4.38million tons per year of concentrate. The report included a process plants design recovery of kerogen at 92%, which with `hydroretorting' would produce approximately 20,000 barrels of oil a day. - matt Sexton.

4.38 million TONS per year.

a ton is 7 barrels

that is 28 million Barrels per year.

Well, we need 23 million barrels per DAY in Amrica alone.

so the large process in Canada needs to be multiplied by a thousand times to meet our needs.

[ClubOfRomeII]

ClubOfRomeII said:

I've never seen the USGS even mention EROEI, could you post a reference to them saying anything about it?

Well gee, surpass -surpass, the USGS has never said anything about ERoEI. Why would they be concerned with a thermodynamic problem?

Perhaps because its a geological organization and doesn't worry about EROEI?

[Revi]

That stuff deep in the Gulf of Mexico is the Dom Perignon or maybe even the water of life, for sure. It costs over 30x more to extract than the shallow water stuff, which is probably more costly than it was on land. Here's what whisky and gunpowder has to say about it:

http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Arch ... 60912.html

[What2DO]

How much oil is left in a well when it is done producing and will we ever be able to get all of the oil out ?

[mekrob]

I think it's something like 30% or so, but I'm not sure. And the only way to get almost all of it (technically you can't get all of it) is if you drill thousands of feet into the ground to get to the source, crush the rock into a sand-like substance, and process it like tar sands. It'd probably cost about $1000 a barrel to do that and would cost much more in energy than you get out of it, so it's pretty..uumm..retarded.

[TITAN]

Actually I think it's something closer to 50% that gets left behind. They could probably get another 10% or so, but the EROEI would be like 2 to 1 barrels. We aren't that desperate yet. I think our current overall EROEI is around 6 to 1...

[Richard]

Just to let you know that the CIA have whipped out another 300 billion barrels! That means we've discovered more in the 2002-2005 period than we've consumed!

Yeah baby!

[aahala]

Just to let you know that the CIA have whipped out another 300 billion barrels! That means we've discovered more in the 2002-2005 period than we've consumed!

Yeah baby!

Your mistake is understandable. You didn't realize who is in
charge of calculating the reserves -- the former Enron accountants.
It's growth thru subtraction!