[Odonatus]

Peter Goodchild's new book, TUMBLING TIDE: Population, Petroleum, and Systemic Collapse, is in bookstores everywhere (a slight exaggeration ), and can also be purchased at Amazon.

Our world runs on fossil fuels. It is estimated that annual oil production will drop to half of the peak amount around 2030. What will happen as we reach the point where there is no practical way to get whatever is still in the ground?

Fossil fuels are in decline, but recoverable reserves of metals are also becoming less plentiful. Electricity will be in decline worldwide because it is produced mainly with fossil fuels.

Without mechanization, irrigation, and synthetic fertilizer, yields for crops of any sort drop considerably, and famine is inevitable; it will simply not be possible to maintain a global population of the present size. Those who expect to survive and prosper will be those who have mastered the art of subsistence farming.

In Tumbling Tide, Peter Goodchild examines what life will look like in the post-peak world, exploring such topics as housing, food production, education, and politics, and delivers the troubling news that solar panels and vegetable patches won’t be enough. Tumbling Tide differs from similar books in the sense that it provides far more detail about the effects of peak oil in the coming decades, and examines the social effects — crime, cults, craziness, and chaos — that could stem from this crisis.

[Ron Patterson]

William Catton, author of "Overshoot" wrote the Forward. He says if he were rich he would buy 535 copies and mail one to each member of Congress. Not that this would do any good because not one of them would be likely to read it. But "Overshoot" was one of the best books I ever read so if Catton says it is good I will take his word for it. Anyway you can read Catton't Forward along with the Preface and first three chapters here: http://tinyurl.com/kkpoul8

[Newfie]

Odonatus.....welcome to PO.

[AndyA]

It is estimated that annual oil production will drop to half of the peak amount around 2030.

Estimated by whom? I havn't seen many estimates that are that pessimistic. That's more or less 5% decline pa. Starting today. I assume no new oil developments are going to be made ever again and we will sit and watch existing production decline as we descend into chaos.

[Newfie]

Any of you guys seen the Al Bartlett video? Know who I'm talking about?

http://vimeo.com/26036597

[Odonatus]

It is estimated that annual oil production will drop to half of the peak amount around 2030.

Estimated by whom? I havn't seen many estimates that are that pessimistic. That's more or less 5% decline pa. Starting today. I assume no new oil developments are going to be made ever again and we will sit and watch existing production decline as we descend into chaos.

A quick trick for finding out how many years it takes something to drop to half of the original amount is to divide 72 by the annual (compounded) rate. So 72 divided by 3% would be 24 years. In other words, if we say that the peak production rate is 30 billion barrels in 2010, then half that rate would be in the year 2034. As the book says, "annual oil production will drop to half of the peak amount around 2030." -- Note: that's 3%, not 6%.

(You don't need to know the following, but 72 [roughly] is the natural logarithm of 100.)

[kiwichick]

good post O


welcome to peak oil

[Quinny]

So 6% decline like we are seeing in some fields would mean 50% decline in 6 years?

[Tanada]

So 6% decline like we are seeing in some fields would mean 50% decline in 6 years?

6% has a half life of 12 years, 7% half life of just under 10 years, 8% half life is 9 years.

[Odonatus]

How fast is the world's usable oil going to run out? Conservative estimates of the average annual decline rate are in the range of 1 or 2%. But there are several experts who have suspected a much higher rate, as can be seen in the articles mentioned below.

"Decline curve," incidentally, has a number of definitions (equations). A simple but quite useful one is "(year1-year2)/year1." For a detailed discussion of this and other definitions, see:

Poston, Steven W. Decline Curves. Hamilton Group. http://www.hamiltongroup.org/documents/Decline%20Curves%20-%20Dr%20Stephen%20Poston.pdf

It should also be mentioned that much of the study of decline rates is based on that of giant fields, rather than smaller ones. At the end of the present article can be found some comments on this matter, particularly with regard to an article by Höök, Hirsch, and Aleklett.

Three articles indicating high decline rates are:

(1) Campbell, C. J. (2009, November 16). Colin Campbell’s response to the Guardian IEA reporting. The Oil Drum. Retrieved from http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5970

(2) Foucher, S. (2009, February 25). Analysis of decline rates. The Oil Drum. Retrieved from http://iseof.org/pdf/theoildrum_4820.pdf

(3) Oil Drum. (2010, February 4). World oil capacity to peak in 2010, says Petrobras CEO. The Oil Drum. Retrieved from http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6169

On page 3 of his article, Foucher says that "production from the super-giant and giant oil fields is the cornerstone of modern oil production. In the top 20, 16 of them are in decline." Does this mean specifically that analyses of these larger fields give us a good indication of overall global decline rates? Or, for that matter, is it also the case that the smaller fields have even higher decline rates? If so, then one might add a fourth study to the three mentioned above:

(4) Höök, Mikael, Robert Hirsch, and Kjell Aleklett. Giant oil field decline rates and their influence on world oil production. Energy Policy, Volume 37, Issue 6, June 2009, Pages 2262-2272 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2009.02.020

On p. 19, these authors state: ". . . The decline of smaller fields is equal to or greater than those of the giants. . . . We believe that the decline in existing production, both for giants and for other fields, will be at least 6.5% or 5.5% if production weighted."

Discussion of very fast decline rates can also be found throughout a detailed study of Saudi oil production:

(5) Simmons, M. R. (2006). Twilight in the desert: The coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

According to Simmons, the Saudis realize that any announcement of a loss of product (as in businesses of any sort) would be bad publicity. Simmons also claims that the present high level of Saudi production is maintained only by enhanced techniques such as water-flooding, and that such techniques mean that the decline can be delayed but that it will eventually be much faster than otherwise.

An annual decline rate of 6% would mean that oil production will fall to half of its peak level in about 12 years after the peak date. If so, let's not forget to duck.


Originally posted at: http://survivepeakoil.blogspot.ca/2014/01/the-decline-rate-of-worlds-oil-supply.html