<DrumBeat: July 14, 2006 The Oil Drum The Course of Our Lives WILL Be Determined by the First Derivative of a Function>

78 comments on Potential Impact of Cantarell's Decline on Mexico's Oil Production

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Sam Foucher on July 14, 2006 - 1:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Look, everything is highly speculative here! Cantarell production has just peaked in 2003 and we have only two years of decline. However, engineers on the ground are saying that it will be a sharp terminal decline so no, you cannot draw whatever lines you want based on this information. Note also that the production levels predicted by the logistic curve on Fig 5. are the same as those given by PEMEX (Fig. 8) and Wood Mackenzie (Fig. 9): around 1.2 mbpd in 2010.
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JCK on July 14, 2006 - 2:03pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Look, everything is highly speculative here! Cantarell production has just peaked in 2003 and we have only two years of decline.

But the argument is that Hubbert linearization, in isolation (i.e., no USGS studies, no CERA data) allows to predict the peak in advance, right?  

Two years ago would an HL fit have told us that Cantrell was at its peak?  From the data shown, I would guess no.

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Sam Foucher on July 14, 2006 - 2:21pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The HL is not used here to predict the peak production (i.e. when we gonna peak and at what rate?), Cantarell has already officially peaked. The HL is used here to estimate the URR and the logistic decline rate (K) (i.e. how fast we gonna lose Cantarell's production). The resulting logistic curve is simply modeling Cantarell's decline post-2005.
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JCK on July 14, 2006 - 2:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I understand this.  I am questioning whether the HL technique has any predictive value at all.  If it didn't predict Cantrell's peak, why would the technique suddenly become predictive immediately following the peak?

While I like the elegance and simplicity of the method, the shown fits do not convince me of its utility.

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Sam Foucher on July 14, 2006 - 2:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
why would the technique suddenly become predictive immediately following the peak?
I see two main reasons:
  • we know that a fast and terminal decline is expected (see the official chart on Fig. 8).
  • the predicted URR (17 Gb) is close to the official number (20.5 Gb)

I could have used something else that a logistic curve: a gaussian or a constant R/P ratio used by economist. Any monotonic curve that is delimiting an area close to 9 Gb will have done the job.
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JCK on July 15, 2006 - 8:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Is there any reason to believe then that the HL method is better model than, for example, eyeballing the decline (based on the two post-peak points) and calculating the area under the graph to generate a URR figure?
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Sam Foucher on July 15, 2006 - 9:15am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
You can find some background on the logistic model applied to the modeling of ressource depletion in the following post:

Links to tutorial material on Hubbert Linearization

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WebHubbleTelescope on July 15, 2006 - 11:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It seems to work but no one knows why. I have a problem with understanding what the logistics K physically means. I think the real depletion rate for all Mexico is under 10% of available reserves using a more realistic rate model.

http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2006/03/mexico-oil-shock-model-part-2.html

Again, I don't think K makes any real physical sense.

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78 comments on Potential Impact of Cantarell's Decline on Mexico's Oil Production

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