Peak Oil News and Message Boards

ralfy wrote:I didn't "stretch" the definition. I said the effects of peak oil take place even before production peaks or drops.

Peak oil is declining oil production. TERMINALLY declining oil production. How can this EVER happen before a PEAK in oil production?

Conventional well production peaked somewhere between 2002 and 2010, personally I think it was 2nd quarter of 2008. The games they play with shales and tar sands and condensates keep producing more and more vehicle fuels. Peak fuel production has not yet arrived, but I think that is what we are really interested in.

KaiserJeep wrote:Conventional well production peaked somewhere between 2002 and 2010, personally I think it was 2nd quarter of 2008.

What is a conventional well? Are they drilling them without rigs now, or no steel casing, something like that?

KaiserJeep wrote: The games they play with shales and tar sands and condensates keep producing more and more vehicle fuels. Peak fuel production has not yet arrived, but I think that is what we are really interested in.

Well, peak manufactured products, like fuel, aren't required to be manufactured from carbon and hydrogen atoms coming from these wells, versus those wells, or that dirt, or that natural gas. So to calculate peak manufactured products, we have t figure out the sum total of all the carbon and hydrogen atoms we have laying around to turn into those manufactured fuels.

The definitive study, where someone attempted to count all those carbons and hydrogens. Boy, there is a bunch!

http://nilsrotgans.nl/work/portfolio/ac ... .1.217.pdf

Conventional wells are what M. King Hubbert wrote about. Loosely defined they are holes drilled in the ground to remove liquid petroleum.

KaiserJeep wrote:Conventional wells are what M. King Hubbert wrote about.

Interesting. So in 1956 he excluded the production from horizontal wells that had been producing since 1927 or so, and the oil and gas production from the 100,000+ hydraulic fractured wells that had already occurred? I am surprised that he was that thorough, because when I read his 1956 paper, he didn't make that distinction, nor did he even use the word "conventional".

But we all must admit that there has been quite a bit of revisionist history when it comes to what modern peak oilers have inserted into his ideas from that seminal work, as it became ever more obvious that bell shaped curves don't work at all.

KaiserJeep wrote: Loosely defined they are holes drilled in the ground to remove liquid petroleum.

Well, it is nice to know that the Bakken, Eagle Ford, Woodford, liquids rich Marcellus, Barnett, Haynesville shales all qualify as conventional then. Admittedly, your definition seem to exclude drilling for natural gas, so would all those wells be unconventional because they just produce dry gas?

AdamB wrote:

KaiserJeep wrote:Conventional wells are what M. King Hubbert wrote about.

Interesting. So in 1956 he excluded the production from horizontal wells that had been producing since 1927 or so, and the oil and gas production from the 100,000+ hydraulic fractured wells that had already occurred? I am surprised that he was that thorough, because when I read his 1956 paper, he didn't make that distinction, nor did he even use the word "conventional".

But we all must admit that there has been quite a bit of revisionist history when it comes to what modern peak oilers have inserted into his ideas from that seminal work, as it became ever more obvious that bell shaped curves don't work at all.

KaiserJeep wrote: Loosely defined they are holes drilled in the ground to remove liquid petroleum.

Well, it is nice to know that the Bakken, Eagle Ford, Woodford, liquids rich Marcellus, Barnett, Haynesville shales all qualify as conventional then. Admittedly, your definition seem to exclude drilling for natural gas, so would all those wells be unconventional because they just produce dry gas?

You are obfuscating. Waste of words.

I believe that Rockman pointed this out previously, and it is an important point.
There are no unconventional or conventional oils or natural gas, there are no unconventional or conventional wells.

The terms refer to the reservoir. The oil from a shale with nanodarcies of permeability could be identical to that from carbonate reef with Darcies of permeability. The technology used to drill infill wells in conventional reservoirs nowadays is not dissimilar from that used to drill into unconventional reservoirs. You can't use the arguement that fracing constitutes unconventional either given many conventional reservoirs are fracced on a regular basis either in cleanup operations or recompletions.

The issue of course becomes when trying to classify heavy oils which to my mind is not an easy one. There are oils with very low API that have low viscosity and cold flow with no problem (eg. oils with API around 14 and viscosity around 65 cp in Colombia Llanos basin) and those that have higher API and extremely high viscosity (API around 21 or so and viscosities in the 4000 cp range at Athabasca). The reservoirs are conventional for all of the viscous heavy oil reserves/resources of significance (i.e. Alberta Oil Sands, Venezuela oil sands, Bemelonga and Tsmimora in Madagascar) but the production technology is different.

This is the problem that occurs when you try to "lump" various elements into simple classifications, it misses the nuances that are often important.

rockdoc123 wrote:I believe that Rockman pointed this out previously, and it is an important point.
There are no unconventional or conventional oils or natural gas, there are no unconventional or conventional wells.

The terms refer to the reservoir. The oil from a shale with nanodarcies of permeability could be identical to that from carbonate reef with Darcies of permeability. The technology used to drill infill wells in conventional reservoirs nowadays is not dissimilar from that used to drill into unconventional reservoirs. You can't use the arguement that fracing constitutes unconventional either given many conventional reservoirs are fracced on a regular basis either in cleanup operations or recompletions.

The issue of course becomes when trying to classify heavy oils which to my mind is not an easy one. There are oils with very low API that have low viscosity and cold flow with no problem (eg. oils with API around 14 and viscosity around 65 cp in Colombia Llanos basin) and those that have higher API and extremely high viscosity (API around 21 or so and viscosities in the 4000 cp range at Athabasca). The reservoirs are conventional for all of the viscous heavy oil reserves/resources of significance (i.e. Alberta Oil Sands, Venezuela oil sands, Bemelonga and Tsmimora in Madagascar) but the production technology is different.

This is the problem that occurs when you try to "lump" various elements into simple classifications, it misses the nuances that are often important.

Interesting, what is the factor that causes high viscosity? I always thought it was a factor of API but clearly you are saying it is not. I presume it has something to do what the particular chemistry of the oil in question other than the API that is the only cause I can think of. I know to make multi-viscosity motor oil they add a chemical that acts as a thickener at higher temperatures to prevent the motor oil from thinning out too much once the engine has reached normal operating temperature.

Cog wrote:

Subjectivist wrote:How brave to give themselves a 15 year window of possibly correct years.

Pretty much like the climate change doomers who always predict that we are all dead in 10 years. Far enough out not to be able to call them on their BS.

Sort of like the technocrats predicting Fusion Power in 30 years, Flying cars, space colonization, I could go on...

Basically we all seem to suck at predicting things.

Interesting, what is the factor that causes high viscosity?

Chemical composition is the guiding factor for the oil sands. Much of this oil is heavily biodegraded which removes light ends from the carbon chain resulting in higher viscosities. But it is different for other oils where perhaps presence of paraffin will create higher viscosity.

A good discussion on viscosity can be found here:

http://petrowiki.org/Oil_viscosity

T - And to add to Doc excellent post I'll toss in a very specific example of how Mother Earth likes to screw with us: the 70 year old field I'm currently redeveloping with hz wells. I'll keep it as light on the technical as possible.

Not too an heavy oil...23° API. But extremely viscous. In fact so "thick" it barely flows through the reservoir. And a wonderful reservoir it is: 30+% porosity, very permeable...500 to 2,000 milidarcies, very strong bottom water drive. Some would expect lateral drainage would be very good. That the oil/water contact would move upwards fairly uniformly as the oil was produced. But far from it. Doc can envision this better then you but give it a try. Imagine a pattern of wells drilled 1,200' apart. As the oil is produced it would be more or less equally pulled from the areas between the wells. We characterize this as a good "sweep". So after 70 years of production you might expect little oil left in the areas between the wells.

So a while back I drilled a straight hole midway between the depleted wells that had gone to 100% water after all those decades of production. And what did we find? Just what I had predicted: a reservoir full of oil with the oil/water contact exactly where it was in 1946. No oil was produced from those areas. So I next laid in a horizontal well where that pilot hole was drilled. And it FLOWED (not pumped) 250 bopd with no water.

Shocking, Doc? I wish I could take credit but another company did similar in another Greta Sand field in the early 90's. But it didn't complete its 5 wells properly and all plugged of during the early days of production. But I learned from my own personal and painful lesson when completing hz wells in unconsolidated sandstone reservoirs offshore. And a few others had eventually tried hz wells in other Grerta Sand fields. And being small onshore operators didn't have my offshore experience and all failed.

Both of my horizontal wells are still producing nicely (with the eventual high water I predicted) and will spud the 3rd in a few months. And now that we just completed our SWD well I'll start cranking up each of the 2 wells to 2,000 bbls of fluid per day. If it works I'll be producing about a total of 600 bopd from a 70 year old field that was producing a total of 12 bopd from 5 wells when I drilled my first hz well. Not bad, eh? LOL.

rockdoc123 wrote:

Interesting, what is the factor that causes high viscosity?

Chemical composition is the guiding factor for the oil sands. Much of this oil is heavily biodegraded which removes light ends from the carbon chain resulting in higher viscosities. But it is different for other oils where perhaps presence of paraffin will create higher viscosity.

A good discussion on viscosity can be found here:

http://petrowiki.org/Oil_viscosity

Thanx for the link, I will take a while to try and digest it properly.

ROCKMAN wrote:T - And to add to Doc excellent post I'll toss in a very specific example of how Mother Earth likes to screw with us: the 70 year old field I'm currently redeveloping with hz wells. I'll keep it as light on the technical as possible.

Not too an heavy oil...23° API. But extremely viscous. In fact so "thick" it barely flows through the reservoir. And a wonderful reservoir it is: 30+% porosity, very permeable...500 to 2,000 milidarcies, very strong bottom water drive. Some would expect lateral drainage would be very good. That the oil/water contact would move upwards fairly uniformly as the oil was produced. But far from it. Doc can envision this better then you but give it a try. Imagine a pattern of wells drilled 1,200' apart. As the oil is produced it would be more or less equally pulled from the areas between the wells. We characterize this as a good "sweep". So after 70 years of production you might expect little oil left in the areas between the wells.

So a while back I drilled a straight hole midway between the depleted wells that had gone to 100% water after all those decades of production. And what did we find? Just what I had predicted: a reservoir full of oil with the oil/water contact exactly where it was in 1946. No oil was produced from those areas. So I next laid in a horizontal well where that pilot hole was drilled. And it FLOWED (not pumped) 250 bopd with no water.

Shocking, Doc? I wish I could take credit but another company did similar in another Greta Sand field in the early 90's. But it didn't complete its 5 wells properly and all plugged of during the early days of production. But I learned from my own personal and painful lesson when completing hz wells in unconsolidated sandstone reservoirs offshore. And a few others had eventually tried hz wells in other Grerta Sand fields. And being small onshore operators didn't have my offshore experience and all failed.

Both of my horizontal wells are still producing nicely (with the eventual high water I predicted) and will spud the 3rd in a few months. And now that we just completed our SWD well I'll start cranking up each of the 2 wells to 2,000 bbls of fluid per day. If it works I'll be producing about a total of 600 bopd from a 70 year old field that was producing a total of 12 bopd from 5 wells when I drilled my first hz well. Not bad, eh? LOL.

Perhaps this is a stupid idea, but would down hole heating make the oil less viscous and better producing? I am thinking something like the huff and puff system used in deep tar sands where they use a higher horizontal well to inject steam and a lower horizontal well to collect the melted bitumen?

MD wrote:You are obfuscating. Waste of words.

Someone who hasn't thought out the definition properly is wasting words. I am just proving, using words, that this is exactly what has happened with this claim of "conventional" this or "unconventional" that.

Tanada wrote:Perhaps this is a stupid idea, but would down hole heating make the oil less viscous and better producing?

Not stupid at all. Been going on in California for more than half a century now.

https://www.onepetro.org/conference-paper/SPE-84848-MS

AdamB wrote:

MD wrote:You are obfuscating. Waste of words.

Someone who hasn't thought out the definition properly is wasting words. I am just proving, using words, that this is exactly what has happened with this claim of "conventional" this or "unconventional" that.

I'll stick with my choice of term, thanks. It suits your pattern. Not that I disagree with your perspective. I do agree with you, much of the time, just not your style.

MD wrote:I'll stick with my choice of term, thanks.

Choice term indeed! Well, we can hope that the EIA or USGS or some other authority on the topic will clear this up at some point, otherwise people might keep running around claiming distinctions without a difference.

MD wrote: It suits your pattern. Not that I disagree with your perspective. I do agree with you, much of the time, just not your style.

My style? How interesting. Never really thought of hard nosed and objective analysis as a style, but sure, I guess.

Lukoil released a report that estimated future reserves and production from Russian reserves - I was surprised that I was able to view it considering the Russians, like the Chinese, tend to keep a tight lid on this type of data - they included an estimate of US tight oil production and potential production from the Bazhenov, assessing it to be comparable to US North Dakota production - but the estimates seemed in line from what I've seen from everywhere else, i.e, expect the current plateau and then decline.

BP Statistical review of world energy


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