<The Productivity of Vehicles The Oil Drum Why Oil Intensity Changed in the US Economy>

30 comments on An update by Chris Skrebowski

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

nrgyman2000 on October 20, 2005 - 4:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Hello, my first posting in this great group.

I tried to summarise his numbers and came up with the table below (hope it becomes readable as it is posted)

It appeares as the decline rates in the presented table in said article has been derived from the IEA demand figures.

SUMMARY FOR THE PERIOD 2005 - 2010 Based on the article "Prices set firm, despite massive new capacity "Petroleum Review, October 2005

Cumulative demand increase                            10,2 Mb/d
Cumulative depletion, 5 %                               26,4 Mb/d
TOTAL NEW SUPPLIES REQUIRED          36,6 Mb/d

Cumulative supplies increases from non-OPEC   9,5 Mb/d
Cumulative supplies increases from OPEC          6,0 Mb/d
Cumulative additional supplies required             20,9 Mb/d

By using the numbers to generate a diagram it came out with  a peak in 2004. I could of course have missed something, but it did not look right to me.

Rune in Norway

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Rembrandt on October 20, 2005 - 4:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The table is quite confusing because of the 5% depletion. This depletion is Type I, II and III depletion. While in his Extra volume required Skrebowski adds up only Type III Depletion (approximately 1.1 mb/d according to him).

A better method would be to add up type II and III depletion which i figure at 2.5% to 3.5% per year.

Then you would get this:

Cumulative demand increase              10,2 Mb/d
Cumulative depletion, 2.5 %             11,8 Mb/d
Total new supplies required             22 Mb/d

Cumulative additional supplies          20.9 Mb/d

It is quite unlikely that we will peak before 2010. Possible yes but unlikely. We also have to count additional projects coming on-stream around 2009 and 2010.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
nrgyman2000 on October 20, 2005 - 4:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well I found it a little hard to decipher subject table, but the table specifies 5 % depletion, and looking at the numbers they seems to be 5 % of IEA demand figures.

A different depletion rate will obviously change the outcome.

Rune in Norway

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
steverino on October 20, 2005 - 9:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
these figures are much more reasonable than skrebowski's numbers.  if his numbers on depletion are to be believed , we have already peaked by the start of his chart, since no new production figure is greater than the depletion numbers for that year. if you believe that we are pumping flat out , as the saudis and chavez are saying, it would imply a peak had already occured. that conclusion seems premature.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Sam Foucher on October 20, 2005 - 10:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Is it possible that we have peaked on conventional oil only, as the ASPO is suggesting, and we are filling the gap with NGL, deepwater, heavy, etc.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Stuart Staniford on October 21, 2005 - 12:01am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It's definitely the case that the great bulk of non-opec supply coming on stream in the next few years is deep water.  After we're through with that, it's going to be Arctic and whatever OPEC turns out to really have (and be willing to sell).

A question I have, particularly for the insiders, is do we really know we've got at most of the deep water?  Eg consider the US offshore which hasn't been surveyed for decades.  I'm guessing seismic surveys in the sixties or seventies would not have looked for/found deep water oil.  So how do we know there isn't a bunch of deep water oil, for example, off the continental slope by the big west coast rivers (Columbia, Sacramento, Colorado, etc).  Or off the Atlantic edge of Europe?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
wkwillis on October 21, 2005 - 12:24am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The offshore sediments aren't thick enough and they don't have a possible anoxic basin history. No hope.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Bubba on October 21, 2005 - 10:48am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Stuart,

The answer to your question is yes - we really have explored the most prospective deepwater areas, we have found most of what is expected to be found, and what is left is of substantially different quality than what has already been discovered.  That does not mean that all the deepwater discoveries have been put on production yet.  Many of these discoveries will be brought on stream in the next 5 years.  However, despite record high oil prices, new deepwater discoveries are few and far between, and the ones you may have read about, you will find as time goes by, are not up to their initial billings.

For more info I have written about this stuff here:

http://beastsbelly.blogspot.com/2005/08/deep-water-basins-will-save-us.html

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/10/7/4122/71046#50

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/10/7/4122/71046#51

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/10/7/4122/71046#64

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Stuart Staniford on October 21, 2005 - 2:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks Bubba - I've seen your very helpful writings on the subject.  I guess my question is: have the oil companies been allowed to explore in this way, for example, off the west coat.  Ah, never mind, I see it's starting to be done.  Looks like only recently however.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Bubba on October 21, 2005 - 4:12pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The answer to that is no, or at least not entirely.

However, the question is not whether there are potentially accumulations in these off limits areas that are attractive as investment opportunities for individual companies and investors. The answer to that is yes.  But a more important question is whether there are areas of the planet that are 1) unexplored or underexplored; 2) currently off limits for exploration and development; and 3)considered to have enough prospectivity to add several million barrels per day to the global production mix.  My personal answer to that is unequivocally no (ANWR not withstanding).

All of the areas outboard of the world's major river deltas have been explored.  (The Mississippi, the Nile, the Congo, The Niger, the Amazon, the MacKenzie etc.).  The biggest deepwater fields found to date are not much more than a billion barrels recoverable each.  Some of these are forecasted to produce at 250,000 BOPD when they are fully up and running.  So it will take 4 of the biggest ever found to fill a production hole of 1 MMBOPD.  If demand is increasing by 2 million barrels per day, we have to be finding about 8 of these every year to fill this hole ( I know, I am preaching to the choir) even without regard to depletion.   Have we as a global deepwater explorers missed this much? I doubt it.

 

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Sam Foucher on October 20, 2005 - 10:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I don't understand why he's making an extensive and detailled analysis of the new supply to afterward picking up a global depletion rate value that seems somewhat arbitrary.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.

30 comments on An update by Chris Skrebowski

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version