thuja, I have not mentioned the EROEI of these finds because no one has calculated what their EROEI's are.

Since these are all very recent finds, of course they aren't producing much oil yet. What - do you expect them to find a new oil field one day, and next week start pumping 1 mbd from it? By complaining that these new discoveries aren't producing vast amounts of oil yet, that's like complaining that one's newborn baby can't do calculus yet.

"OMG this newborn infant is so useless! It can't even do calculus! Wake me up when it's at least able to do algebra."




Not necessarily. That depends on how many of these new Ghawar's were found, how big they were, how much capital was invested in their development, and on what the rate of decline of the old fields were.

That's why it is important to look back at the last time an oil field was found that produced immense daily amounts...and that was the 70's (and mainly from the 40's/50's). All those finds since? They have never neared the enormity of production of Ghawar. So...yes...I will wait and see- and as I said- wake me up when we hit 500kb/d (1/12th of Ghawar).




Ummm...you are alone....completely. There is nobody that will back you up on this claim. It is so erronsous and without support that it makes us question your understanding of the subject. Check out the projections of any and every analyst out there. I'm afraid the only ones you may be able to quote are some obscure Ruissian scientists who believe in abiogenisis...and I sincerely hope we don't lose you to that sphere of thinking...

To be honest I think all this talk of Ghawar is a red herring. Even back in your supposed "glory days" of oil exploration, the vast majority of oil finds were much, much smaller than Ghawar. You act as if there were dozens of Ghawar's discovered back in the good old days, but that's just not true. Most oil discoveries back then were fairly small.

And even at that, I continually mention the 300 billion barrels in the Bakken - which is 3 times the size of Ghawar - and you still act as if there are no new Ghawar's being discovered. Sorry, but you are wrong.


Well, let's see, just mentioned in this thread alone . . .

Bakken = 300 billion barrels = 3 Ghawars.
Brazil = 70 billion barrels = 0.7 Ghawars.
Bohai Bay = 100+ billion barrels = 1 Ghawar.

That's 4.7 Ghawars. And no, I did not make up those # of barrel figures, various geologists, oil companies and others have. Read my previous links. So yes, I actually do have quite a few people who (collectively) agree with me. You lose.

Its very difficult to discuss this when you don't understand that reserves do not equal recovery...

I'll say it again because it is the crux of this discussion

Reserves do not equal recovery.

The finds were massive back then because recovery rates were massive.

Let's look at the biggest ones...

Ghawar
Burgan
Cantarell
Da Qing
Samotlor

All these were found many decades ago and some more than a half century ago. They are massive not because of their "resevres" but because of their production and recovery rates.

Nothing has neared these boys since. My advice is to stop talking too much about reserves...it sounds great on paper...but in reality?

I could add up the trillions of barrels of shale in the Rockies and Alberta and say..see..no problem! We have 20 Ghawars here in N. America...

Do you see why this would be silly? Shale has a much lower EROEI and recovery rate than those other fields did. As Chevron's CEO has said..."The easy oil is gone".

So yes- we can still get production...a little out of many thousands of fields. But massive fields with gigantic recovery rates? Name me a few since the 70's.

^
And you can be sure Ghawar and Cantarell started out similar to the newly discovered offshore fields in Brazil, or the Bohai Bay.

Some amount of oil was initially discovered, and at first they thought it was small or maybe medium sized. Soon they started production. As they did more and more exploration and production of the field, they gradually discovered it was bigger and bigger. As they discovered it was bigger and bigger, they realized they could extract more and more from it.

This scenario has been played over a zillion times with a zillion different oil fields.

How do you know the same thing won't happen with offshore Brazil, or the Bakken, or Bohai?

In all probability, it will, especially in the ones with the larger reserves.

It's not like Ghawar started producing 4 mbd from Day One.

If these old fields were pretty small compared to what has been discovered...can't you name at least a few that are surpassing their production that have been discovered in the last 30 years?

Such faith.

I'm not sure I understood your question?

Are you asking me if there is an oil field that is producing more now than it did when it was first discovered <30 years ago????

Examine the last 30 years for new discoveries. Then let me know how many of them have reached production rates like Ghawar of over 5 mb/d.

There should be a few right? Just like you said, it takes a while for new discoveries to show production. Some of these newer finds (with even bigger reserves) in the last 30 years must have become as productive as Ghawar. So let me know a few of them that you can find...

This question is a straw man. I've already pointed out earlier:

"To be honest I think all this talk of Ghawar is a red herring. Even back in your supposed "glory days" of oil exploration, the vast majority of oil finds were much, much smaller than Ghawar. You act as if there were dozens of Ghawar's discovered back in the good old days, but that's just not true. Most oil discoveries back then were fairly small."

I never said there were discoveries now in active, large-scale production within the last 30 years which were bigger than Ghawar. The 3 discoveries I listed - Brazil, the Bakken and Bohai Bay - have only been discovered to have large amounts of oil very, very recently.

You're asking me to prove something which I never claimed.

The figures which I gave are for total North American oil production (US + Canada + Mexico) from the BP Statistical Review 2007:

1979 13578kbd
1980 14063
1981 14344
1982 14790
1983 14838
1984 15226
1985 15304
1986 14792
1987 14730
1988 14642
1989 14014
1990 13856
1991 14182
1992 14050
1993 13899
1994 13807
1995 13789
1996 14052
1997 14267
1998 14182
1999 13678
2000 13904
2001 13906
2002 14069
2003 14193
2004 14137
2005 13695
2006 13700

Those figures are 100% accurate, and exactly what I claimed them to be. You can apologize for talking B.S. after verifying at the referenced link.

I like JD, keeping in mind that north america probably has the most stretched out hubbert curve.

hey, like my new sig?

JD- I apologize- I thought you were sourcing just US production and didn't see that you wrote N. American production...my fault.

But you did say that these new discoveries were likely to equal or surpass Ghawar.

Nop discoveries in the last 30 years have equalled a Ghawar but we are supposed to believe that these new ones someday...down the road quite a while...will do as well as Ghawar.

Hmmm...

Wake me up when we hit 500 kb/d.

EROEI per se is not an important measure. OROOI (Oil Returned on Oil Invested) and LFROLFI (Liquid Fuel Returned on Liquid Fuel Invested) are the ones which are important. If the new fields/sources require a lot of energy to produce, we can use non-liquid energy to produce them. For example, it doesn't make sense to use liquid fuel to distill ethanol, so one good idea is to distill it with coal. It's a way to "liquefy" coal, so to speak, and people are doing it in the cornbelt today. In the future, we may also use small nuclear reactors to generate heat to cook the oil sands, or cook oil out of old depleted reservoirs. That's a way to "liquefy uranium". Another idea is to use coal instead of petroleum to refine petroleum. That doesn't improve the EROEI, but it greatly improves the OROOI, and thus frees up more oil for the market.