<Tertzakian: A Review by Dave The Oil Drum Sunday Open Thread>

220 comments on Saturday Open Thread and News Dump

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westexas on March 25, 2006 - 12:07pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
According to Matt Simmons, the top 10 majors working the North Sea--using the best data and the best engineers in the world--were predicting that North Sea production would not peak until 2010 at the earliest.  

The North Sea (crude + condensate)  HL plot that I did indicated that North Sea production peaked at 52% of Qt in 1999.  Oil production in 1999:  6 mbpd.   Oil production in 2005:   4.7 mpbd.  

It would be very interesting to see what the majors were predicting that North Sea oil production would be in 2010.  It looks like production will have fallen by about 50% by 2010, from the peak in 1999.    

Evaluating the North Sea was a piece of cake compared to evaluating the world, Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc., but the top 10 majors were flagrantly wrong regarding the North Sea.  The humble, simple little HL model was deadly accurate.

Remember this little story every time you hear happy talk from ExxonMobil, et al, regarding future production levels.  

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Leanan on March 25, 2006 - 12:33pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Speaking of wrongheaded predictions...Jerome a Paris has a new article about EIA's natural gas forecasts at DailyKos:

Countdown to 100$ oil (23) - Running out of natural gas in
North America

We're going down, down, down...

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WebHubbleTelescope on March 25, 2006 - 6:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Leanan, thanks for the link.  I have always wondered why a certain type of graph is always done for NG fields but never for oil fields. The one I am talking about is this, from Jerome's post:

If people could see this effect on oil fields, we could better explain the situation for oil as well.
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TJ on March 26, 2006 - 10:09am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Maybe oil wells do not work like that.
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Roberto on March 26, 2006 - 10:22am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
At least for the UK, you can see a similar graph for the oil production here:  http://www.peakoil.net/Publications/06_Analysis_of_UK_oil_production.pdf (page 6 and 7). The data only runs till 2000 though. But there is a different color for each oilfield (there are around 260). The graph is pretty impressive, by the way. You understand much better the major problems that the uk oil production is facing.

It would be convenient to group oilfields by their starting year of production, like the graph you show of NG. The data of each oilfield updated is available here: http://www.og.dti.gov.uk/pprs/full_production.htm . I have imported all the data with a program. So it would be fairly simple for me to do the graph you suggest. I will try to do it soon and post it.

Norway also has a web site with the same type of data. I will try to do the same thing for Norway.

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WebHubbleTelescope on March 26, 2006 - 3:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Excellent, thank you. The graph for UK North Sea does condense everything into one graph.


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step back on March 26, 2006 - 9:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That was back in  year 2000.
Does anyone have a similar graph for year 2004-2005 to see how the predictions for the "future" (beyond 2000) actually worked out? And also is there a discoveries graph that shows how those correlate to actual productions in the UK?
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WebHubbleTelescope on March 27, 2006 - 1:06am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Like this

As of 2004 it was down ~66% from peak. The prediction said 50% by 2005. Not bad, IMO.

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step back on March 27, 2006 - 3:06am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Here is an overlap of a trace (red) of Mobjectivist's yellow dots (assumed to be actual production points) and the year 2000 prediction curve. Pretty close. (The yellow verticals are for aligning the year markers at 1980, 1990, 2000)

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AlanfromBigEasy on March 27, 2006 - 12:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I looked more closely at these series of graphs and I have some questions.

The 2002 & 2003 graphs agree on 2003 production, (as do the 2005 & 2006 graphs), but there is a delat between 2004 & 2005/6 graphs for 2003, presumably a settled # by 2004.

Likewise there is a small delta between 2005 and 2006 in their "predictions" for 2004 #s.

Presumably this is a timing/later revisions issue, but it seems large and late for such.

How much of the delta between 2005 & 2006E for 2006, 2007, 2008 is due to abandoned gas wells in the GOM (near depletion wells/fields that are not worth re-entering) ?

Any offical explanation for these MAJOR erros in prediction ?

Thanks,

Alan

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Leanan on March 27, 2006 - 1:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Jerome explains how the graph was made in the comments to his diary.  IIRC, there's a two-year lag between prediction and reality.  Because, for example, the 2005 prediction was done during 2004, so the 2004 numbers on the 2005 line are prediction, not actual.
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Kyle on March 25, 2006 - 5:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Here's Statoil's version of the truth, circa 2001:
http://www.statoil.com/STATOILCOM/SVG00990.nsf/Attachments/Paradoxofplenty.pdf/$FILE/Paradoxofplenty .pdf

Forecast production for 2005:  190 million cubic meters
Actual production for 2005:  148 million cubic meters

You'd think that Statoil would have had a better handle on what's going on, given that they are the major operator on the shelf.

The interesting thing is that the beat simply goes on:  The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate forecasts oil production to be flat to 2010:
http://www.npd.no/English/Emner/Ressursforvaltning/Utbygging_og_drift/Sokkelaret_2005_petroleumsprod uksjon_120106.htm

They seem to live in the fantasy world where EOR will provide more and more oil each year....

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220 comments on Saturday Open Thread and News Dump

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