[AdamB]

How about we meet in Paris in 2040? I was just there a couple of weeks ago and it was grand as usual.

And for 2050 let's meet in Nuuk, Greenland. I was there about three months ago and it was rainy and cold....but by 2050 it could be the new Riviera thanks to global warming..

Pix or it didn't happen!

Hopefully you took the long way around to both, or maybe the pollution controls on the aircraft or boat were disabled in order to up your super polluter street cred even higher than normal?

[Plantagenet]

Pix or it didn't happen!

Lots of things happen that you don't know about, AdamB.

Thats how the real world works.

Sooooo......back to my question please.

So far no one can answer it....perhaps you can.

If Michael Lynch .....one of peak oil's most well known critics....... is right and conventional oil production peaked ca. 10 years ago.....

And if Michael Lynch is right and it is growth in "unconventional oil production' (i.e. shale fracking, tar sands, liquid condensates etc.) that has helped to drive global oil production higher since then.....

new-predictions-of-peak-oil-and-energy-are-flawed/

Then when will unconventional oil production peak?

Will unconventional oil production peak in the 2020s?

Or later....say in the 2040s or 2050s? Or at some still later date?

Or will unconventional oil production continue to increase forever?



Cheers!

[Tanada]

Having been wrong at least a dozen times publicly I see know harm in guessing yet again only to likely be proven wrong, unless I am right at last. 2025 will be the golden year for unconventional oil leading production ever higher. It may be that Unconventional itself shall keep growing past 2025, however accumulated declines in Conventional will grow faster than Unconventional increases can grow.

[AdamB]

Pix or it didn't happen!

Lots of things happen that you don't know about, AdamB.

I just wanted to see the pix. If you are going to pollute as much of the planet as possible while jet setting, you might as well share the pix!

Sooooo......back to my question please.
So far no one can answer it....perhaps you can.
If Michael Lynch .....one of peak oil's most well known critics....... is right and conventional oil production peaked ca. 10 years ago.....
And if Michael Lynch is right and it is growth in "unconventional oil production' (i.e. shale fracking, tar sands, liquid condensates etc.) that has helped to drive global oil production higher since then.....
Then when will unconventional oil production peak?
Will unconventional oil production peak in the 2020s?
Or later....say in the 2040s or 2050s? Or at some still later date?
Or will unconventional oil production continue to increase forever?

Forever and forever is too stupid even for you.

There are two systems I am aware of capable of answering your question. One you can buy access to commercially. The other you can't. Would you like me to PM you a link to the purchase page of the first?

[Plantagenet]

..... you are going to pollute as much of the planet as possible...

A childish ad hom from AdamB.

As I said above, there is clearly a lot you don't know.

Forever and forever is too stupid even for you.

Another childish ad hom from AdamB. And another dishonest post.

It was you who posted forever and forever....not me. Since you think that is a stupid thing to post I suggest you look in the mirror and see who posted that particular line.

There are two systems I am aware of capable of answering your question. One you can buy access to commercially. The other you can't. Would you like me to PM you a link to the purchase page of the first?

Ohmigosh........at last...... a brief moment of civility from AdamB.



But alas.....still no answer to my simple question.

Here's a suggestion, AdamB......If either of the "two systems" you refer to actually has an answer to my question and you believe that is a reasonable answer, then why don't you just post that answer to the question? If you are referring to proprietary data sets it still should be possible for you to give your own approximate answer to my question....i.e. when do you personally think unconventional oil production will peak?

Tanada had no problem suggesting a reasonable date in his post above, i.e. ca. 2025. That seems quite reasonable to me.

When I started this thread several years ago I suggested global unconventional oil production might peak sometime in the 2020s, based on the arrival of an apparent peak in US unconventional oil production.

So.....Whats your best personal estimate?

AND

Has anyone else reading this seen a proposed date for the peak in global unconventional oil production? Or does anybody else have their own estimate of when unconventional oil production will peak?

THANKS!

and

Cheers!

[AdamB]

Here's a suggestion, AdamB......If either of the "two systems" you refer to actually has an answer to my question and you believe that is a reasonable answer, then why don't you just post that answer to the question?

Your perspective on at least one other component within the system is required to even begin to answer the question. Until then....

[ROCKMAN]

Here's one of the problems with the "peak game" for the US...time frame. First, the chart most have seen:

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafH ... rfpus1&f=a

Peak obvious in 2019.

Now the same data but monthly (instead of yearly) production plotted:

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafH ... rfpus1&f=m

Peak MONTHLY has still past but notice we are now seeing a steady increase in the monthly production. Not at the previous peak YET but are heading that way. So, there is no guarantee we won't see a new monthly PO in the near future. So, one might till say the US has finally reached its PO. But it is still possible that sometime during 2023 that call may be proven, ONCE AGAIN, to be WRONG at this point in time

Remember both charts represent the same data...just timed differently.

Also, while you're looking at the two charts let me point out you won't see that production profile for any other country or oil producing region on the world. Let that soak in before trying to call global PO.

[AdamB]

Here's one of the problems with the "peak game" for the US...time frame. First, the chart most have seen:

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafH ... rfpus1&f=a

Peak obvious in 2019.

Now the same data but monthly (instead of yearly) production plotted:

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafH ... rfpus1&f=m

Peak MONTHLY has still past but notice we are now seeing a steady increase in the monthly production. Not at the previous peak YET but are heading that way. So, there is no guarantee we won't see a new monthly PO in the near future. So, one might till say the US has finally reached its PO. But it is still possible that sometime during 2023 that call may be proven, ONCE AGAIN, to be WRONG at this point in time

Remember both charts represent the same data...just timed differently.

Also, while you're looking at the two charts let me point out you won't see that production profile for any other country or oil producing region on the world. Let that soak in before trying to call global PO.

Ummm.....Rock....any reason why you used graphs for field production instead of total US oil supply? The numbers on your charts don't seem to encompass total US crude production. Like this one. Does the EIA count field production as just a subset of total US oil produced perhaps?

[Plantagenet]

......there is no guarantee we won't see a new monthly PO in the near future.

Of course. Isn't that obvious?

No one can "guarantee" anything about the future. As Yogi Berra famously said, "Its tough to make predictions, especially about the future.



Nonetheless, anyone who doesn't try to plan for the future is just asking to be caught unawares by future events. I think every human being, to some degree, tries to anticipate what lies ahead in the future so they can prepare for it.

AND, even though it is very tough to make accurate predictions, its a fact that some predictions actually are accurate and useful.

For instance, the stock market is basically a mechanism for making bets about the future of specific companies and the economy as a whole. When you buy a stock in a company you are betting/hoping/predicting that the company is question will do well and your stock will go up. Of course there are no "guarantees" your prediction will be right, especially in a year like 2022 (thats a little stock market joke for those of you who don't follow the market). But overall people who "predict" the stock market will go up tend to be right more often than not.

So lets bring this back around to peak oil.

Can we all agree that in the oil market the group of scientists who foresaw a peak in conventional oil production occurring in ca. 2010 turned out to be pretty accurate, at least according to peak oil critic Michael Lynch (see my link above).

However these same scientists who successfully predicted conventional oil production would peak ca. 2010 utterly failed to predict the large amount of "unconventional" oil that could be produced....and failed to predict that the unconventional oil would enable total global oil production to continue to increase year after year up to the present day.

And that brings us back to the rationale of this thread.

I'm interested in the future of unconventional oil production.

Given the fact that it didn't go up in spite of a big run up in oil prices suggests that unconventional oil production is maxed out and can't go up much more.

And if unconventional oil production can't go up, then it is at risk of going down.

Thats why I'm wondering if unconventional oil production is going to peak sometime in the 2020s......

And thats also why I'm wondering if anyone else has an intelligent opinion on this question.

So far I've gotten a thoughtful opinion from Tanada, who opined that he thought unconventional oil production might peak about 2025. Personally I think that is a reasonable date. Thank you Tanada.

Adam weighed in with his usual Ad hom attacks. That added nothing to the discussion.

And Rockman said no prediction can be guaranteed....Therefore I excuse Rockman from making a prediction since R apparently doesn't believe in making precautions that can't be guaranteed in advance to be accurate.

I'm still wondering if anyone else has an intelligent opinion about when Unconventional oil production might peak.

Here's your chance----does anyone else have any thoughts on this topic?

CHEERS!

[AdamB]

Adam weighed in with his usual Ad hom attacks. That added nothing to the discussion.

This isn't an ad hom.

Your perspective on at least one other component within the system is required to even begin to answer the question.

That statement is simply a fact. For those who didn't learn the basics in scientist school on what the dependent and independent variables are, here is the explanation.

There are 3 total variables involved in answering the peak oil question. Reserves and resources, while variable in size and cost, are only a dependent variable. They are dependent on both of the other two variables (consumption or price), either of which, but only one, can be independent. So, to solve for the answer you are looking for, the person asking the question (he,she or it) provides the price or consumption variable. This makes that variable immediately independent, and the other immediately dependent. And the solution for peak oil can be calculated either way. So you choose price, and you get back volumes through time. You choose consumption expectations through time, and you get back supply matching that consumption and price. You can see peak oil both ways, either as price going asymptotic because you forced a unreasonable consumption volume into the system, or a supply volume that never reaches a prior peak because it lacks a sufficiently high enough price.

You Plant get the "there is no spoon" answer because obviously you never thought about what it takes to actually answer this question for more than the minute or two it took you to write it down.

And none of this is an ad hom. But it is appropriately patronizing. Cheers!

[Plantagenet]

You can see peak oil ...as.... a supply volume that never reaches a prior peak because it lacks a sufficiently high enough price.

Of course. I already touched on this point in my post above. In theory supply volume should increase as the price goes up.

BUT there is a point at which production levels can't be increased to prior levels no matter how large the increase in price because there isn't a great deal more oil to be found and produced. For instance if you go to a depleted oil field, you can spend unlimited amounts of money drilling well after well after well but you aren't going to get production back up to the levels it reached before the oil field was depleted.

AND, as I pointed out above, this seems to be happening on global basis with unconventional oil. The data clearly shows that the price of oil has more than tripled over the last two years without any significant increase in the production of unconventional oil either in the US or globally..

The fact that unconventional oil production hasn't gone up in spite of a dramatic price increase demonstrates that the oil producers can't easily increase the amount of unconventional oil being produced right now even though there has been a large increase in the price of oil.

So why hasn't unconventional oil production gone up even though the price of oil has more than tripled since 2020? Obviously producers can't easily increase the amount of unconventional oil being produced or they would've produced more oil in response to the price increase.


Back here in the real world the quantity of unconventional oil being supplied to the market isn't increasing in spite of large increases in price since 2020.

Cheers!

[AdamB]

In theory supply volume should increase as the price goes up.
BUT there is a point at which production levels can't be increased to prior levels no matter how large the increase in price because there isn't a great deal more oil to be found and produced. For instance if you go to a depleted oil field, you can spend unlimited amounts of money drilling well after well after well but you aren't going to get production back up to the levels it reached before the oil field was depleted.

You are exactly correct. Good thing systems underpinned by resource estimates naturally deplete with time, the price for recovery goes asymptotic, and substitution into other resources kicks in. Just as expected. And this continues until there are no resources left to develop at any price. Peak oil happens long before this point.

AND, as I pointed out above, this seems to be happening on global basis with unconventional oil. The data clearly shows that the price of oil has more than tripled over the last two years without any significant increase in the production of unconventional oil either in the US or globally..

"seems to be". Without knowing the shape of the underlying resource cost curves, cost differences as they relate to cartel behavior (non-econonomic behavior in general), exogenous factors like the desire for folks unlike you to use less for environmental concerns, and the investment environment related to hydrocarbon development and time frames involved, it can EXACTLY look like it does today. The cure to high oil prices is high oil prices. Why? Because those prices stimulate new production. Until it can't. The same is true of low oil prices. How long did it take to cure the high oil price starting around the global peak oil in 1979? About 7 years. How long did it take demand to to cure the resulting lower oil prices? ABout 20. How long did it take to cure high oil prices in 2008? 1 year. How long did it a reinvigorated demand to fix that? About 3 years. How long did those high oil prices, which brought about the full scale development of continuous resources in the US, take to bring down prices? About 4 years. How long before increasing demand and cartel behavior handed us high prices again? Maybe 5?

And now you think 2 years should be enough to bring production online? Why? GOM development requires approximately 2 years from the beginning of infrastructure construction to production. Planning before that can take another year or two. Conventional development onshore is easier, and less expensive, and mostly under the control of the cartel, who really like higher prices, and with less growth in the US, can begin to dictate a price level closer to triple digits than not. Again. A consequence of their control over giant and supergiant discrete reservoired oil that is quite inexpensive to come online compared to the rest of the world.

So my answer is your expectations don't reflect the timing easily visible in history, where such cycles can take only 3 or 4 years, or a decade or two.

The fact that unconventional oil production hasn't gone up in spite of a dramatic price increase demonstrates that the oil producers can't easily increase the amount of unconventional oil being produced right now even though there has been a large increase in the price of oil.

The US doesn't do much unconventional, so you can ask the Canadians about why they have chosen to not increase that production. In the US, CEO's of American E&P companies and accompanying continuous resource development are being ordered in board meetings, and given bonuses, for lower operating costs per barrel, not new barrels. And in the current price environment are making record profits to boot, so why screw up a good thing by overproducing when your board is telling you, and PAYING you, not to? The oil isn't going anywhere. There is no NOC in the US, just independent actors in a free market. You can't tell an oil man any more how to spend his money than an environmentalist can order you to stop being a CO2 super emitter.

So why hasn't unconventional oil production gone up even though the price of oil has more than tripled since 2020? Obviously producers can't easily increase the amount of unconventional oil being produced or they would've produced more oil in response to the price increase.

Incentives aren't about increasing production anymore.

[Plantagenet]

The cure to high oil prices is high oil prices. Why? Because those prices stimulate new production. Until it can't.

That's precisely my point.

Oil prices have gone up dramatically in the last two years but unconventional oil production hasn't gone up. It appears that unconventional oil production can't go up much in response to higher oil prices..

.... now you think 2 years should be enough to bring production online? Why?

Because supposedly one of the characteristics of unconventional shale oil production in the USA is the ability to rapidly bring more production on line. Its not like they need to go out and explore first----the locations of the oil shales are already know and already leased and already developed in the USA. But here we are in an environment where oil prices have gone up a lot but unconventional oil production hasn't.

I'm not the only person to have noticed this. Some of the biggest players in the shale oil fracking biz are now acknowledging that the shale revolution is over in the US and growth in unconventional oil production is going to be very slow if there's any growth at all.

For instance check out this news story where the CEO of HESS PETROLEUM acknowledges the shale revolution is over in the US: is-us-shale-oil-revolution-over-

Even the folks in the Biden administration know this.....they tried to get the US oil industry to produce more oil after the Ukraine war started, but the US oil industry told them they can't do it. Once the US oil biz told Joe they couldn't produce more oil Joe Biden switched to begging the Saudis and the Commies down in Venezuela to pump more oil, and finally Joe Biden started pumping oil from the US SPR.

The US doesn't do much unconventional, so you can ask the Canadians about why they have chosen to not increase that production.

You really think "the US doesn't do much unconventional"??? Ohmigosh now that is funny.

If you don't know about US unconventional oil production then how can you claim to know anything about the oil biz?

Here....let me help you out on this one. First, since you wanted pics, here is a pic of an official US government slide showing the incredible growth of unconventional oil production in the US as a whole and from the Bakken Formation over the last few years. How is it possible you dont know about this?



Thanks for my laugh of the day on that one

AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAH....

Now.....let me help you out some more with information about US unconventional oil from another official US government source of data.....

Back here in the real world the US is the world leader in shale oil production.

I suggest you google this up and educate yourself on this one, or if you don't know how to use google I'll post a link below for you click and learn about his topic from the data kept by our friends at the EIA in the US government. ENJOY!

EIA: US shale oil production

Cheers!

[AdamB]

If you don't know about US unconventional oil production then how can you claim to know anything about the oil biz?

Look up what continuous resources are. The USGS defined them back in the late 80's I' believe. If you can't be bothered to understand the core geologic concepts behind the US oil and gas resurgence, enjoy your blissful ignorance.

[mousepad]

Interesting thread. But what is the conclusion? With current knowledge, are we expecting oil supply to keep growing? For how long? With my limited understanding, fracking is primarily done in the US. Will that be expanded across the globe? The world is big, I'm sure there's plenty of suitable locations. Or isn't there? And once energy becomes real expensive, environmental concerns go out the window and people start to frack and burn to no end.

[AdamB]

Interesting thread. But what is the conclusion? With current knowledge, are we expecting oil supply to keep growing? For how long? With my limited understanding, fracking is primarily done in the US. Will that be expanded across the globe? The world is big, I'm sure there's plenty of suitable locations. Or isn't there? And once energy becomes real expensive, environmental concerns go out the window and people start to frack and burn to no end.

Both China (gas) and Argentina (gas and oil) are working through the early phases of development, China is doing it quietly but you can occasionally find info on it, I believe I've got a EIA Today In Energy article reference, and Argentina just had story about it needing to build out more takeaway capacity, as their development has overwhelmed existing surface infrastructure. So yes, it is becoming a thing in at least 2 other countries. Oil wise, Argentina could be significant, China could be significant for gas, but the real mother load is in Russia, and it is oil. Figures. With their old discrete reservoirs though, they have plenty of oil under the old rules of reserve growth to keep going for a decade or three instead of developing continuous resources.

At the end of the day the most likely scenario is that a recognition of the inherent "badness" of fossil fuels at both the geopolitical and environmental level occurs, and begins to impede their development, because of ESG factors, or just outright restriction and regulation attempting to make them "clean". That can't happen as the burning of the products itself is the problem, so it will just continue to get harder to develop, prices will reflect it through time, and the macro economics of substitution and conservation will work its magic across a decade or three. And peak oil will be no more relevant in the long run that it was in 1979 or 2018. The transition will have all the trappings that Europe is worried about now, and the US was worried about throughout the 1970's. Economies will suffer variously, the US will uniquely be less hard hit because it is a diversified economy, so high oil prices help America as the world's largest producer, low prices hurt it, but stimulate the consumers to spend money happily on toys and junk, supporting the manufacturing and consumption side of the equation. One hit conder countries like Russia will get hammered on the low price side but love high prices, China is building an economy more akin to the US than Russia so it'll be the same give and take that we'll have. Europe will hurt with high oil prices as they aren't much of a player anymore, Canada will resemble the US as will other large oil producers that also have a captive domestic market of First World consumers.

Environemental concerns really are minimal, but it is unlikely they can stay that way forever. Cost alone could be the ultimate stake driven into the O&G industry, related to ES&G. Consumers then react to high oil and gas prices, EVs hit the exponential growth portion of the S-curve, nukes suddenly look cheap in comparison to hydrocarbons as fuels, and after a decade similar to the 1970's, you've got a different looking world.

A reasonable scenario anyway. As it occurs doomers will be doing the usual doomer thing, but that isn't new, as doomers scream the same crap for the same reasons even when things are fine.

[Plantagenet]

Interesting thread. But what is the conclusion? With current knowledge, are we expecting oil supply to keep growing? For how long?

Thats exactly what I've been asking. There are a lot of knowledgable people posting at this site and I thought it might be interesting to "crowdsource" their opinions on this important topic.

So far I've offered my prediction that unconventional oil will peak sometime in the 2020s...Tanada had a more specific target date of ca. 2025.

In contrast Rockman, usually a reliable source of information, deferred making a prediction because he said there is no guarantee any prediction would be right.

And AdamB seems to be confused about what unconventional oil actually is.

So.....there is no clear consensus yet on when unconventional oil will most like reach a peak in global production..

I welcome more opinions/predictions on this question......

With my limited understanding, fracking is primarily done in the US. Will that be expanded across the globe? The world is big, I'm sure there's plenty of suitable locations. Or isn't there? And once energy becomes real expensive, environmental concerns go out the window and people start to frack and burn to no end.

Well....thats one of the big questions. Will the US shale oil revolution be repeated at other sites around the world?


Major shale basins of the world

So far there isn't much sign of that happening. There have been attempts to develop shale oil in the UK and Poland but without much success.

Last time I looked into this there was a successful shale oil operation starting up in Argentina but I haven't seen any recent updates.

Overall, recent news reports say the outlook doesn't seem bright for further rapid growth in unconventional oil

shale-oil-wraps-up-an-underwhelming-year-girds-lower-growth

So, Mousepad---- do you have a personal opinion on the future of unconventional oil production?

If so please share.

Cheers!

[Outcast_Searcher]

Having been wrong at least a dozen times publicly I see know harm in guessing yet again only to likely be proven wrong, unless I am right at last. 2025 will be the golden year for unconventional oil leading production ever higher. It may be that Unconventional itself shall keep growing past 2025, however accumulated declines in Conventional will grow faster than Unconventional increases can grow.

What makes you fairly rare, on the internet, is having the integrity and modesty to ADMIT it's hard to be right re predictions. The internet the past couple years and investing comments generally (re crypto, stocks, inflation, etc) really stands out to me on that front.

So Kudos, for that refreshing attitude and admission. And overall, this site's members' (including Yours Truly for sure) LAUGHABLY random performance re trying to pick annual WTI crude prices for something like 5 to 8 years as I recall is a CLEAR sign that we ALL, in reality, make PLENTY of mistakes when trying to forecast complex things, even a year or less out.

I gave up trying to forecast the stock market 20ish years ago. I got lucky as a newb in the 80's and mistakenly didn't realize how much of that was luck, and it took me another decade to convince myself that, OOPS, throwing dice would be just as good at market predicting as I was in the short to intermediate term.

[Plantagenet]

it's hard to be right re predictions.....we ALL, in reality, make PLENTY of mistakes when trying to forecast complex things, even a year or less out.

Yo Outcast_Searcher......I assume this means you are unwilling to make a prediction about when unconventional global oil production might peak?

Personally, I agree with you (and Yogi Berra) thats its tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

Nonetheless, given that fact that conventional oil production now seems to have peaked, the next logical question to ask is when unconventional oil will peak.

Clearly Unconventional oil production in the US and Canada and a few other places has grown rapidly and been a tremendous success story over the last 10-15 years.



But there are rumbles in the oil biz that the growth of unconventional oil production is slowing down (see my links above).

And if the growth of unconventional oil productions slows enough....it will stop growing at all.

Personally I think that might happen in the current decade (ie. in the 2020s).

Cheers!

[AdamB]

And AdamB seems to be confused about what unconventional oil actually is.

Anything is possible. Here is a list of 150 global crude oil benchmarks and their prices, can you just point out which ones are unconventional, then I can go get the production on them and see if they are indeed increasing?