<Site migration this weekend; make sure your email address is up-to-date The Oil Drum DrumBeat: December 23, 2006>
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60 comments on A Primer on Reserve Growth - part 1 of 3

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Freddy Hutter on December 21, 2006 - 11:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Euan, the world was hardly at threat of "running out".  This line is "accumulated consumption (1043-Gb) ... not annual (31-Gb).  Altho it doesn't appear on the graph, your concerns are best addressed by watching the FutureResouces/AnnualProduction ratio over time.  It is commonly known as 40 year plateau in the BP graph and has been the rationalization for little discovery over the past two decades.

In my study, this ratio has a historic low of 35 years in 1978, a recent low of 40 years in Y2K and has since increased to 62 years.  While the metric has no bearing on supply rates in the future, it does bode well for a lengthy duration of supply at whatever flow rate.

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obdacher on December 23, 2006 - 10:35am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Freddy,  why is the oil extraction rate decreasing in the US ? Is all this state of the art high tech oil field technology a waste of money ? Is the quality of the reserve barrel decreasing ? Are the reporting standards nowadays less strict ?

 According to EIA the US had in 1984 28.446 million proven reserves and produced that year 3,249,696,000 barrels i.e 11,4% of the total. In 2004, before the hurricans struck, the US had 21.371 million reserves and produced 1.983.302.000 barrels which works out as 9,3% of the total.

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Hothgor on December 23, 2006 - 11:33am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I don't think Freddy is suggesting that we should not experience declining production rates, simply that we will have an extremely long plateau with a very minor decline set over decades.
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obdacher on December 23, 2006 - 11:47am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hotgor you didn´t understand my question. I am not talking about  absolute production levels, I want to know why the efficiency of the oil production from a given amount of reserves is decreasing
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chemE on December 23, 2006 - 12:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Freddy has also stated that PEMEX will produce 4.0 MBPD in Q1-2007.

Inquiring minds want to know:

(1) How does Freddy have that information
(2) Why has not PEMEX said so publicly
(3) Is Freddy predicting this to be a 1Q affair or will it be longer (2Q, 3Q, 1Y, 2Yrs, 5Yrs, ... infinity years)

(4) If Freddy is predicting this information based on field by field analysis is he willing to share that information? Or state that he will not share it? - for xxx reasons!

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60 comments on A Primer on Reserve Growth - part 1 of 3

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