JohnRM wrote:Okay, I'm getting into this discussion late, but I thought it was generally considered fact that peak conventional oil was in December 2005 and that all of the growth currently underway is from unconventional sources such as tar sands and shale. I suppose you can celebrate that if you wish, but how long will that continue? I can't imagine either unconventional sources of petroleum or NGLs continuing to close the gap for much longer given what we know about both industries.
Hi John, the IEA reports I use don't have month resolution. But I think quarterly resolution is better anyway.
http://omrpublic.iea.org/archiveresults ... full+issueHere's what they say about world conventional crude supply
Year Quarter, Total minus bio and NGL = conventional crude2005 4th quarter 84.28-4.8 =
79.48mbpd average
2009 4th quarter 86.2-(5.0+1.7) =
79.50mbpd average
2010 4th quarter 88.2-(5.5+1.7) =
81.00mbpd average
Therefore, 2005 4th Quarter, the one with Dec2005 in, isn't peak quarter. That's good enough for me. 2010 is highest conventional supply so far.
On tar sands and shale, is that included in NGLs? I recall the canadian tar sand project uses natural gas in the refining process. I don't know. I'm pretty sure that if tar sands and shale are included in proven oil reserves, then they give something like an extra 200 years proven supply. And that's just the stuff that's been found. The drive to find such oil is much smaller than the drive to find conventional crude. Chances are, if there was a serious effort to find all world shale and tar oil, then there'd be several thousand years supply.
Geologically how can this happen?
Simple.
Conventional crude is attacked by nature. If it gets onto the surface, it evaporates off or is eaten by bacteria. Shale oil and tar sands is the stuff left over. So while world oil crude has been continually lost to nature for millions of years, tar sands etc have been building up.
That the world has, for millions of years, been exposed to large amounts of CO2 from natural oil seeps ( I recall the canadian tar sands is a relic of a natural seep of an estimated 3trillion barrels worth of crude), is a threat to the AGW movement, since today the cumulative total oil consumption is a little over 1trn barrels.
The biosphere is used to bursts of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmos.
Peakers refuse to acknowledge data that's contrary to their beliefs. That the 2005 is conventional crude peak myth is still readily believed 5 years after it was refuted is a measure of how strong the 'peakoil collapse is now!' religion is.
Braticus made a start on looking at the IEA numbers, so I thought he'd be the one telling you.
But seems he's since realised the error in his ways. Maybe he got pm'ed by other peakers warning him not to look at data as that habit is threatening to the religion.