Discussion of Harper[BP] ASPO presentation
Posted: Thu 08 Jul 2004, 16:59:38
Thought I would kick off discussion of a thread about this ASPO presentation.
http://www.peakoil.net/iwood2004/pptBer ... perpdf.pdf
My thoughts:
The first seven slides clearly describes factors in reserve growth. And eye balling the figures it looks like the reserves about doubled over 10 years from discovery for the fields described.
The presentation then describes the Arrington aproach to estimating reserve growth. Observing in slide 10 that taking the 77-91 data you could estimate that a fields original reserves might grow by 10 times after 60 years.
This presentation addresses one of the concerns I've always had with the back dating of oil reserves to year of field discovery. That is that the newer data doesn't take into account the reserve growth that has yet to happen for the new field. So on slide 11 it adjusts for the expected growth and shows the discovery trend in the USA.
Then in slide 12 it throws a spanner in the works by saying that the predicted growth really depends on the data set used. The newer data being better than the older data. I think that this could be due to a couple of factors. Technology is getting better at the initial estimate or 2 the companies are depleting their unbooked reserves to keep the financials looking good. (I'm not sure if this is using proved or 2P numbers)
I don't know why the author doesn't update the Attanasi and Root data for the past 13 years. Anybody interested in doing that effort and posting that here (Soft_Landing?)
Slide 13 leads me to think that the unbooked reserves may be a factor in what is show in slide 12 as revisions have decreased in importance in the reserve additions
Slides 14 and 15 show reserves increased much more slowly over the first 20 years for UK and Norway. Doesn't say why though. Could be because the reserves are proved and probable as opposed to just proved. Anyway, it is very interesting. I wonder if the average is the weighted average or not?
Slides 16-20 show how ignoring reserves growth can lead to some missleading forecasts of reserves
Slide 21-22 comes back to the arrington approach to estimating future reserves growth this time for global production. But this time instead of growing by 6 times after 30 years as was shown in US data set the reserves tripled after 30 years. The reason for the difference is unexplained. I would hazard to guess it is a combination of factors, most importantly being different reporting regimes. I wonder a bit how exactly he got the data since (I believe) many countries such as SA don't break down reserve additions to individual fields (at least I wasn't aware that that data was arround). Can anyone correct me on this? Another possible factor is that the data is significantly newer and then would take advantage of the newer imaging technology.
Anyway it shows that the global effort to find oil has probably been much better in the past 20 years than Peak Oilers usually think, and that we are still probably finding a bit more oil than we use, as long as you factor in the predicted reserve growth.
Slides 23-24 repeat the process for global gas production.
All in all I thought this was an excellent presentation and wish I had seen it in person.
http://www.peakoil.net/iwood2004/pptBer ... perpdf.pdf
My thoughts:
The first seven slides clearly describes factors in reserve growth. And eye balling the figures it looks like the reserves about doubled over 10 years from discovery for the fields described.
The presentation then describes the Arrington aproach to estimating reserve growth. Observing in slide 10 that taking the 77-91 data you could estimate that a fields original reserves might grow by 10 times after 60 years.
This presentation addresses one of the concerns I've always had with the back dating of oil reserves to year of field discovery. That is that the newer data doesn't take into account the reserve growth that has yet to happen for the new field. So on slide 11 it adjusts for the expected growth and shows the discovery trend in the USA.
Then in slide 12 it throws a spanner in the works by saying that the predicted growth really depends on the data set used. The newer data being better than the older data. I think that this could be due to a couple of factors. Technology is getting better at the initial estimate or 2 the companies are depleting their unbooked reserves to keep the financials looking good. (I'm not sure if this is using proved or 2P numbers)
I don't know why the author doesn't update the Attanasi and Root data for the past 13 years. Anybody interested in doing that effort and posting that here (Soft_Landing?)
Slide 13 leads me to think that the unbooked reserves may be a factor in what is show in slide 12 as revisions have decreased in importance in the reserve additions
Slides 14 and 15 show reserves increased much more slowly over the first 20 years for UK and Norway. Doesn't say why though. Could be because the reserves are proved and probable as opposed to just proved. Anyway, it is very interesting. I wonder if the average is the weighted average or not?
Slides 16-20 show how ignoring reserves growth can lead to some missleading forecasts of reserves
Slide 21-22 comes back to the arrington approach to estimating future reserves growth this time for global production. But this time instead of growing by 6 times after 30 years as was shown in US data set the reserves tripled after 30 years. The reason for the difference is unexplained. I would hazard to guess it is a combination of factors, most importantly being different reporting regimes. I wonder a bit how exactly he got the data since (I believe) many countries such as SA don't break down reserve additions to individual fields (at least I wasn't aware that that data was arround). Can anyone correct me on this? Another possible factor is that the data is significantly newer and then would take advantage of the newer imaging technology.
Anyway it shows that the global effort to find oil has probably been much better in the past 20 years than Peak Oilers usually think, and that we are still probably finding a bit more oil than we use, as long as you factor in the predicted reserve growth.
Slides 23-24 repeat the process for global gas production.
All in all I thought this was an excellent presentation and wish I had seen it in person.