<DrumBeat: October 25, 2006 The Oil Drum DrumBeat: October 26, 2006>

94 comments on Koppelaar: Peak Oil, Separating Facts from Fiction

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Freddy Hutter on October 25, 2006 - 5:33pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Most of the Depletion Models compiled at TrendLines have maintained their integrity with IEA's indication this month of a new quarterly global production record with 85.7-mbd in 2006Q3.  This compares with 84.4-mbd in 2005Q3.  While in the big picture we have seen nine years with annual setbacks since 1975, the last annual drop in global supply was in 2002.

Rembrandt, Chris & Colin all engage in bottom up analysis.  Their methodology lends itself to inherent upward revisions due to the lack of medium and long term production announcements by the oilco's.  Most announcements are 3-7 yr timelines.  As these companies see refinery enhancements in the 2012-2017 year time frame, imenent announcement of new and/or expanded projects will be forthcoming and with those, the annuan revisions to the above three models.

This has been the background to the merging of our twelve models over the past seasons.  There is no evidence that a seachange is ahead in the next decade.  The merging will continue and continued revisions in URR imply a Peak in the 2020-2030 era at earliest (subj to refinery capacity expansion) based on the history and magnitude of upward revisions by our conservative Models in the past three years ...  

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Luis de Sousa on October 26, 2006 - 3:14am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The same old arguments on reserves growth.

Conventional Oil reserves peaked in 1979 and have been falling ever since.

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expat on October 26, 2006 - 3:51am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
And the impact of burning that much oil is considered where in your hopeful assessment?

Peak oil has a number of factors, including an increasing recognition that burning oil at such massive volumes is a problem, in itself. This potential restraint to production is never considered by people who argue that oil production will increase, possibly because the entwining of the two subjects is just not clean enough - it is possible to accept the geology of peak oil, and its engineering aspects, but the entire framework of human society, including recognition that the short term must be balanced by a longer term? Too complex - and besides, people who think burning fossil fuels idiotic need to prove their position, while we all accept that economic progress through increased economic activity is in and of itself a public good beyond dispute. I have read there is some real cheap land available in West Virginia and Alberta - I wonder why people keep moving away from coal and tar sand mining operations, since cheaper land would seem to be the sort of economic benefit which would attract people, not repel them.

Simply saying that it will be possible to pump that much is not enough. Which I don't quite imagine will happen anyways - both the Gulf and the Russians have been throwing some real wrenches into scheduling over the past few years, while the Nigerians are just being typically unstable, over the last few years - and as for Iraq, well, you can decide whether production is likely to go up or down in a society which seems to be increasingly violent and riven. But decline is real, and neverending in places like the U.S.A., Great Britain, Norway, and well, at some point, that list will include every oil field on the entire planet.

I am not sure that such heroic measures of oil recovery will be as acceptable in five years as they are among the brave pioneers at the frontiers of human technology making us all observers in a world wide, real time lab experiment to empirically see what happens when CO2 is re-introduced to the atmosphere on a geologic scale in a timeframe which has nothing much to do with geology, but an awful lot to do with our and our children's lives.

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clifman on October 26, 2006 - 10:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Spot on expat.  This piece by Dale Allen Pfieffer on the Energy Bulletin is the best work I've seen on the confluence of PO & climate change.  Parts II and III are here and here (PDF warning on #3)  Comprehensive and well worth the time IMHO.
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jim burke on October 26, 2006 - 12:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
All projections should be viewed as best case scenarios, because political, military and natural events will certainly subtract from production, but will rarely add to it.

Consider how much production has been lost in the past 5 years due to non-geological, non economic forces. Imagine if you could graph that, and model it into the future.  

My guess would be that, because of the impending defeat in Iraq, unrest in Nigeria, and Putin's actions, etc., there will be greater losses in the future than there have been in the past.

Thus, "peak 2010" might become "peak 2007" because of forces which would be difficult to anticipate, let alone graph.

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expat on October 26, 2006 - 11:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
'...political, military and natural events will certainly subtract from production, but will rarely add to it.'

Actually, that is pretty insightful, as long there is some recognition that some production can be quickly restored (freezing in winter) while other production is gone (sunk in the Gulf).

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mjacobspaj on October 26, 2006 - 6:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I wonder if -50 C in the winter and clouds of black flies and mosquitos in the summer have anything to do with land prices around the oil sands projects?

Not likely?

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expat on October 26, 2006 - 11:49pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, that doesn't apply to West Virginia, God's own country or some such, if I remember that correctly - I grew up in Northern Virginia.

The reference to Alberta was to an article detailing how a family farm is shutting down due.

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Rembrandt on October 26, 2006 - 6:17am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Your case for peak in the 2020-2030 era would be possible depending on

  • the amount of new discoveries in the deepsea
  • Timing of new/expanding projects comin-onstream in the 2012/2017 timeframe
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94 comments on Koppelaar: Peak Oil, Separating Facts from Fiction

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