TheDude wrote:Meanwhile there's always that unconventional stuff: Lukoil, Total agree to work on Siberian Bazhenov shale oil-report | Energy & Oil | ReutersInterfax also reported an unnamed Lukoil representative told it the company plans to extract some 100,000 tonnes of oil (733,000 barrels) at the Bazhenov formation this year. Reuters could not reach Lukoil on Saturday.
2kb/d, in other words. Gotta start somewhere. The initial Bakken production 10 years ago was mighty lean, too.
I read everything I can find on the Bazhenov. A formation the size of Texas and the GOM put together could bring more than a few barrels to market, even with really awful recovery rates. Of course if they flood the market tight oil itself won't be economical in the first place, but hey...
The possibility of Russian tight oil flooding the market and dropping the price below production costs won't keep me up at night. But I'd guess there's a better than zero chance of Russia and a few other key countries developing unconventional reservoirs to a much greater extent then many of our fellow peak oilers might think, counteracting depletion of conventional reservoirs. We're already seeing this, not due to some great technological advance, but simply due to oil getting more expensive and society getting more desperate to maintain our energy fix.
Once the tight oil bubble pops (slowly, and from global region to region), I think we could very well see a coal-to-liquids bubble take its place in the US, Russia, China, India, et al. We'll burn everything we can. The key variable is how much we can afford to burn.
All scraping the bottom of the barrel, of course, but it flattens out the peak of Mt. Hubbert. Slow grind down.