I agree that Campbell is way too optimistic on decline rates. What kind of Maximum percentage of decline do you have in your mind Bobbyboby? And how fast will this percentage be reached for Worldwide production?

I don't agree on existing remaining reserves, not on hard data though but only on logic and what appears right to me. But since you seem to give a very low existing reserves and URR number (445 billion barrels remaining and an URR of 1500). Im even more curious about your decline rates. It seems you think that the decline will be around 6-10% annually quite soon.

98% of the world oil reserves have already been discovered. So that means that let me see. an URR of 1500, 2% left so around --> 30 billion barrels. How do you envision future discoveries? Low trickles of 5-7 billion barrels for around 5 years and then exploration suddenly stops (uneconomical?) Or what are you're limiting factors in this equasion?
If i graph your prediction linearly (based on liquid discovery numbers from IHS Energy)

2000-17.90
2001-10.40
2002-10.90
2003-7.70
2004-7.60
2005-6.08
2006-4.86
2007-3.89
2008-3.11
2009-2.49
2010-1.99
2011-1.59
2012-1.28
2013-1.02
2014-0.82
2015-0.65

What do you think about total liquids discovered? (last year according to IHS Energy 7.6 Billion barrels i think).

About Saudi Arabia OIIP what do you think about these numbers (approximates, eyeballed from a graph):

Abqaiq, Abu Hadriya --> 25 Billion Barrels
Qatif --> 15 Billion Barrels
Ghawar --> 200 Billion Barrels
Khursaniyah --> 8 Billion Barrels
Safaniyah --> 63 Billion Barrels
Abu Safah --> 14 Billion Barrels
Berri --> 22 Billion Barrels
Zuluf --> 25 Billion Barrels
Shaybah --> 38 Billion Barrels
Hawtah Trend --> 6-10 Billion Barrels

Where are the overstatements and why are they overstated (OIIP that is).

Bobbyboy since you bolded this statement ... I feel obliged to ask the question!
Do you think this is unreasonable and why?
Deffeys is essentially assuming that in modelling production from a reservoir all the terms beyond the first order Taylor series expansion of the equations describing multi-phasic are irrelevant (or negligible).
Hardly a good approximation if one is interested in predicting and managing a single reservoir, quite a good approximation if one wants to leverage individual well data into a global prediction curve.
And the depletion rate post peak ... will be determined not only by geology/physics but also how we proceed to cope with the depletion as well. Most multi-phasic flow models I have seen (and I do hope that rockdock confirms that by providing real world data) are asymmetric .... the peak occrs at <50% of whatever will be eventually recovered. Change the extraction rate ... and the curve changes shape.
Based on that .... Deffeyes is probably right (and I think he is a little bit pessimistic as well). And the reason I think he might be a little bit pessimistic is because fitting production data to these curves is a really nasty business : even when the parameters are known, one ends up getting biased estimates. Since a) I took the personal trouble to run such experiments at home and b) I am more qualified compared in NLR than many other people I have seen "predicting" the future I think that that particular assessment is little bit off the mark: 2500GB is my "estimate"

But even though the reality of a maximum possible rate of production is disputed (this is grounded on the mathematical descriptions of the physical processes we are talking about), the date of the peak , the maximum production value and the post peak decline rate (which will NOT be constant) are still open issues. However I see no scientific basis in claiming that the peaked will occur (?occured) at 1100GB out of an URR of 1500GB. This is as credible as the scenario by the IEA which shows a high peak in 2037 and an almost overnight decline.
Highschool/undergrad fluid dynamics suggests otherwise ....
And reciting the anti-technology litany (i.e. it cannot make a difference if use seismic/imaging/HPC) is plain stupid. Twenty years ago they were using the same arguments in my field (I'm a research physician), and yet everything froma basic research to clinical practise is based on computers and imaging nowadays .
So let's see: physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, medicine, electrical and chemical engineering, nuclear engineering were transformed by the same methods to deal with uncertain quantitative data which people claim are not applicable to geology. What is the basis of this claim? History certainly does not support this claim ....
Or is it the religious belief ... that the mother Gaia will send its executioners to take care of the human vermin?
My 2c on this ....

Edit
-------
Having said all that, I have to make a [b]personal statement[/i] about the need to discontinue our addiction to the carbon crack due to GW.This will not only make the peak irrelevant but it will also make a transition much less painful than it would have been otherwise. Since we rode the cheap oil to the desert (as rockdock eloquently put it in a different thread), it is better to start heading back now that it broke its leg and not stirr it onwards till it dies. At the very least we will not have to walk back

12%, five years post peak.



Simmons suspects the decline rate will be 8-10%. I suspect the decline rate will be in that range within three years post peak.



Future discoveries will not follow a linear pattern. 3 billion barrels of the 30 are in AWNR so I expect that to be discovered with the next five years. 5 billion barrels are offshore Africa they will be sporadically discovered in the next ten years. The rest will be hundreds of small fields discovered worldwide at a slow trickle for the next 15 years. The IHS figures are overestimating the URR of the fields found such as Kashagan in 2000 (4 billion barrels not 13) and the Rasjasthan finds in 2004. Last year I would put discoveries at 3.5 billion barrels.


Ghawar-OOIP is 110 billion barrels. Overstatement due to greater heterogeneity in the reservoir rock particularly in the southern parts, right lateral strike-slip fault in north-south direction bigger than thought.

Safaniya-OOIP 35 billion barrels. Rock fracturing in southern part meaning that oil seeped away (no cap).

Abqaiq-OOIP 15 billion barrels. Source rock thickness overestimated.

Shaybah-OOIP 16 billion barrels. Rock permeability being less than originally envisaged.

Qatif-OOIP 12 billion barrels. Greater heterogeneity in source rock, higher water saturation.

Abu Safah-OOIP 8 billion barrels. Higher water saturation than expected.

Berri-OOIP 15 billion barrels. Lower rock permeability than envisaged.

Zuluf-OOIP 17 billion barrels. Greater heterogeneity in source rock.

Marjan-OOIP 8 billion barrels. Reservoir rock giving lower porosity in southern part.

Hawtah Trend- OOIP 4 billion barrels. Not as extensive as first thought.

Abu Hadriya- OOIP 3 billion barrels. Lower permeability and porosity than first thought.

Khursaniyah- OOIP 3 billion barrels. Lower permeability and porosity than first thought.

Khurais-OOIP 6 billion barrels. Size overestimated thought similiar to Ghawar source rock different in many parts.

Manifa-OOIP 12 billion barrels. The infamous vandium field.

Other fields-OOIP 8 billion barrels. About 40 smaller fields.

Future discoveries-OOIP 5 billion barrels. Mainly offshore Red Sea.

50% of Neutral Zone-OOIP 4 billion barrels. Fractures in Khafji source rock.

Total Saudi Arabia OOIP 281 billion barrels.

It is unreasonable because most natural and social phemoneana do not follow a strict linear path, exponential growth and decay is the norm ie stock market bubble and crash but it is not exact. Deffeyes'/Hubbert's model is thus a benchmark by which to analyse the situation, it is not as simple as he makes out but it does dispel the USGS numbers as absurd. Modelling suffers from the problem of endogenity, everything is endogenous yet all regression models have to assume at least one exogenous variable. I would suggest you read up on the power laws that pop up in many natural phenomena they could be of some use (the mathematics is very hard by the way).



Here is a basic graphical illustration of the peak at roughly 65-75% of URR produced:



{Image Link: Bell 33. On my end, I have to actually download it and open it. Copying and pasting the URL works too; EE}

The main issue here is not one of demand destruction that is only temporary rather it is one of technology. Technology does not create energy (first law of thermodynamics) rather it enables energy to move from a low to high entropy state. The quicker this process runs the steeper the eventually decline will be that is why such steep declines have and will occur. Look at Russia for example, it produces 9.5mbd at present according to the Russian government up over 50% from 6.2 mbd in 1999 yet it will stop exporting in 2010 (there is already a 90% tax rate on oil exports). Current Russian consumption is 2.6mbd, lets assume the Russian economy keeps growing at a 5% rate until 2010, oil consumption grows twice this rate (not uncommon for developing countries) leading to Russian consumption of 4.2mbd in 2010 (it was at 5mbd in 1991 before the system collapsed), so in five years Russian production will more than halve, especially as they have been overproducing their fields like in Saudi Arabia for short term gain (thats Gangster Capitalism for you ). That is a 15% decline rate so the IEA decline rate that you castigate is not unrealistic. Bear in mind that their official oil reserves which are put at 72 billion barrels by BP are overstated. Remaining reserves which are officially a state secret are 25 billion barrels.

bobbyboy thanks for the reply.
I have to point out something that you might not be taking into account.
A big % of oil fields in this world are "fragmented" whihc means that unless one finds a way to reach areas that are not draining is via technology.
If the technology had not been apllied, the resource would have stayed in the ground (that would have been good for GW). However this is not violating the 1st or the second thermodynamic law .... that area would not have produced anything in the first place.
Regarding the use of models, reality and mathematics: due to the reason of my research work I have a much better understanding (and respect) for mathematics compared to many other people (including the majority of engineers produced by our Universities). Power laws and scale free network is an interesting heuristic by Barabasi et al but I'll never give my or anyone else's mathematical models the status of real - world objects. This is the mind projection fallacy ... and ET Jaynes has proved (at least to me) that this is single most important factors in mathematical/probabilistic modelling.
I have to point out that Deffeyes approximation is not a linear one - solve the differential equation and you will find a power law there (after converting from natural logarithm to whatever log base you like). Going above and beyond Deffeyes would require one to have access to the detailed mathematical/structural/physicochemical models that describe every single reservoir across the world.

Unless you have such data, models and computing power you are expressing (as I am) an uninformed opinion. But uninformed opinions , even when they agree, are totally worthless as evidence.
Regarding the "super sucker" /overproduction theory: all though it is true that the faster you are draining a resource the faster it will decline post peak , basic fluid dynamics demands that the decline is slower than the ascent. Since you have no way of knowing of the areas that were drained in the particular oil fields, the geometry of the deposit etc abd repeat imaging data/drilling data on the fields that are depleting it is very improbable and actually impossible to make predictions about Ghawar, Russia or any other place.
Now if you do not have such data.models/computers you have to rely on production data and some form of macroscopic models to make predictions. Deffeys and many others in the forum have provided such models which are being discussed. I have not seen your models though and I have to ask the question: do you base your predictions on inside knowledge, faith, or the thermodynamic-religion?
I apologise for the harsh tone of this, but it is important that everyone plays with open cards. Your last post did not provide enough info to categorise you as a concerned citizen, an industry whistleblower, a Y2K/end of the world believer or a disciple of Heinberg and other neo-tribal/ neo-primitivist cults.

bobbyboy, you seem to be very knowledgeable about Saudi production. After reading "Twilight in the Desert" and just about every other source available, I considered myself knowledgeable about Saudi Arabia's oil! How did you come up with those revised OOIP numbers for each field? Is there a detailed source that I never found? Do you work in Saudi Arabia or know someone who works there? If those OOIP numbers are correct, reserves must be vastly overstated! We really would be on the verge of declining production in Saudi Arabia.

Agreed. However the point is that technology is still a double edged sword. It allows companies to pump faster than in the past so getting their capital investment back quicker and allow production to plateau (past the 50% URR point) for longer but leads to higher decline rates as a result which is why the decline rate on the downslope will be greater than the unrealistic 2-3% number that gets quoted time and time again even the CEO of Lundin Petroleum (Sweden's largest oil company) said that decline will be conservatively 6% post peak (they help fund Aleklett and co at Uppsala University). Schlumberger say 8%. Simmons says 8-10%. This graph which I will post again as you seem to have missed it illustrates the wide spread nature of the decline rates being far above low single figures:




Not so you seem to only consider evidence if it is in mathematical form. Evidence for peak oil does not necessarily have to be in that form to be able to make informed opinions of what is going on. This is due to the human nature element (it is thus different from observing a purely physical phenomena such as the earth's rotation around the sun). It depends on whether you think our behaviour is rational or irrational, I would put it to you that we are collectively irrational and thus cannot be modelled in a Bayesian sense as you seem to want to do.



Not if the reservior is damaged in the process that is what you are missing and they have been damaged. It was admitted by the chief reservoir engineer of Chevron back in 1974. I will again repeat:


That is precisely why Simmons is so concerned about this issue, it has been known about for over 30 years yet the official line is still disingenuously "trust me".



None of those three. I look at the big picture (that is something you are failing to do). For oil production that would be how much oil have we produced thus far? (1020 billion barrels), how much is left to produce? (400 billion barrels + 30 billion barrels to be discovered), when will the peak be reached? (it already has it was in 2004) what will be the peak producton amount? (81.5mbd), what will the decline rate be? (initially 3% increasing to 12% before declining to 8%). This is supplemented by individual field analysis and the two approaches combined for refinement purposes. Hope that explains where I am coming from.



I am just a concerned citizen of course!

I have read much of Simmons' work and it is broadly correct. He does not give specific numbers however it is obvious that the official numbers are vastly overstated simply by the jist of what he has uncovered. A good starting point is to take the official reserve number (261.7 billion barrels for Saudi Arabia, 70 for Ghawar etc ) as the OOIP (some have suspected that is why 260 was chosen in the first place) and then do a field by field assessment making adjustments where necessary. There is no single detailed source, I use a variety of sources to help with my understanding of the situation including the likes of the Odell for an optimistic viewpoint to balance the likes of Deffeyes, Campbell, Bakhtiari etc. By drawing upon as many different sources as possible you will improve your understanding of the "big picture" and to discriminate between good and bad information. I have no connection with Saudi Arabia. The reserve numbers are vastly overstated, I would put them at 45 billion barrels remaining although this includes the use of artificial lift (ESPs etc) which will take some time to implement once production starts to fall off a cliff. Saudi Arabia's oil production has been declining since 2003 (it peaked in 1981) but has not collapsed yet although it could be doing so at present.

Do you have a graph for the production curve?

Your general idea about Saudi and world oil production is correct. I don't think that those OOIP numbers can be stated with any certainty, although they might be good estimates.

A few questions:
1. Do you really think that there are only 30 billion barrels left to find in the whole world? I thought that 6 billion barrels have already been discovered year-to-date. Of course, this might be overstated for some reason, or perhaps I don't remember correctly.

2. Do you really think that there are only 400 billion barrels of proven and probable reserves? 45 billion barrels of reserves in Saudi Arabia as opposed to an official number of 262 billion would indeed be a massive overstatement, but is this the case in the entire world?

3. Has Saudi Arabia's oil production been declining since 2003? Officially, it has risen to about 9.6 mb/d. Do you have a reason to think that this is not the case?

4. Same thing for world production. It seems like it was above 84 mb/d before the hurricanes, so it couldn't have peaked at 81.5 mb/d last year.

5. Looking at your field-by-field numbers for Saudi Arabia, Abqaiq's OOIP looks a bit understated. Based on cumulative 1977 production of 5.5 billion barrels, cumulative production now is probably around 12 billion barrels. If OOIP is 15 billion, even if production were to stop right now, it would still be a very high recovery rate.

I have not constructed one but here are two based on data from the EIA & IEA. For graphs based on "official" data firstly bear in mind:

Secondly:


From 1970 up to 2003:
http://www.hgs.org/attachments/articles/342/_Figure3.jpg

The EIA put April 2003 production at 9.6 mbd (August 1981 all time peak 10.4 mbd) which has yet to be topped although they put it at that figure from April-August this year so far. Their figures are entirely fictitous. Saudi Arabia is certainly producing under 9 mbd at present.
Based on data from the IEA:


It is similiarly fictitous fed from Petrologistics data; the peak on the graph in 2004 should be lower than the 2003 peak.

Global oil discoveries peaked in 1964. The trend has been downwards since then, virtually everywhere that has significant hydrocarbon potential has been explored with advanced technologies (with the notable exception of Antarctica). No mega field (defined as URR of 500 million barrels or greater) has been discovered since 2002. You may be getting confused with gas finds they are being found far more frequently and in greater hydrocarbon size. The last great oil field to be found will be the missing "Queen" on the Alaskan North Slope which I would expect to be 2 billion barrels in reserve size. The discovery numbers that are reported initially generally do not distinguish what they are eg URR, OOIP, 2P, 3P etc hence the confusion and overstatement. Additionally oil companies like to report discoveries in OOIP terms to give a favourable impressive to the unaware that they have found more than they know is really recoverable.


Yes the much lambasted R/P ratio will finally come into its own here. Annual world oil production (all liquids) is 29 billion barrels. 400/29 =13.8. Compare this to Exxon's 13 and BP's 12 and you can see it is in the right ball park. Yes reserves are overstated worldwide including the rest of OPEC, FSU and all the major international oil companies. Here is what the other 10 OPEC members have (remaining reserves):

Iran 25
Iraq 20
Kuwait 15
UAE 12
Qatar 1.5
Nigeria 10
Libya 6
Algeria 4
Venezuela 8 (ex Orinoco)
Indonesia 2.5
Total OPEC (including SA) = 149 billion barrels.



Yes it has see my reply to Doly. In addition I would add that they have been blending some of the lower quality crudes with the high quality ones for economic reasons (less discount), this has helped conceal the decline rates since 2003 in the big five giant fields.



See my reply to Doly. The 84 mbd figure you quote is a statistical fiction and gets quoted all over this forum will little regard for its authenticity. See Simmons' Missing Oil report for how the official numbers don't add up. The 81.5 mbd is thus perfectly possible once the data is adjusted for the overstatements needed to keep the impression that production is ample to meet demand. Pre hurricane production was 80 mbd not 84 mbd.




It is not understated. Abqaiq is simply a near perfect reservoir making a high recovery factor possible. Simmons:


Simmons Presentation

73% of 15 = 11 billion barrels produced; about what you are claiming.

Additionally this cross section of Abqaiq courtesy of Saudi Aramco will show you the Saudi oil miracle in all its glory (red is gas, green is oil , blue is water):


There certainly isn't much oil left in that field.

That's impressive, but how do you estimate these numbers? Considering that nobody is giving true numbers?

bobbyboy -

SO you feel we peaked ~2004 (entirely possible) and you're predicting a 10%++ depletion rate
by 2010. Gulp

Sounds rather dire. Unfortunately your conjecture is reasonable

Time will tell...

Thanks for the compliment. How do I estimate those numbers you ask? Why I pull them out of thin air just like they do! Only joking . Firstly lets examine the OPEC reserve shenanigans of the 1980s which occured in response to new rules on production quotas being directly related to reserves. Here's figures for the larger members (Abu Dhabi and Dubai are emirates of the UAE):

http://philhart.com/images/peak%20oil/opec.gif

We know that the above is fictitous for three reasons. Firstly no new discoveries were announced at the same time which could have been responsible for the revisions, secondly all the countries played along with the pretence in a systematic fashion and thirdly isn't it amazing how production and discoveries between years exactly match each other so many times .
So clearly its best if we take the numbers in 1980 not the current inflated figures as a starting point. From this we can subtract production from 1980 to present and add new discoveries. This is particularly applicable to Iraq which has many barely developed fields such as East Baghdad, West Qurna and Majnoon they were not included in the 1980 figure. Then by assessing the giant fields in each country and comparing this bottom up approach to the top down one with adjustments where fit yields the numbers stated. In addition the general problems in Saudi Arabia such as most production coming from old heavily depleted fields and overproduction damaging field reservoirs is applicable to all OPEC countries; it is not just a Saudi phenomena if anything it is a lot worst in some of the other countries eg Kirkuk in Iraq where fuel oil reinjection (yes that heavy residue left over from the refining process, what were they thinking?! ) occured so that production was routinely nearly three times optimal production (700 kbd v 250kbd) suffice to say the water cut problems now make the Saudis look like model reservoir engineers .


Thank you for your kind words and support .



It will indeed.