<The geopolitics of expertise The Oil Drum A concern about Canadian gas and the oil sands>

118 comments on Saturday open thread

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Halfin on March 18, 2006 - 2:19pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
BTW, the HL method accurately predicted the 1999 peak in North Sea oil production, when the top 10 majors working the area--using the best engineers and the best data in the world-- were confidently predicting that production would not peak until at least 2010.  Kind of gives you a warm fuzzy feeling of confidence regarding the proclamations of energy abundance by ExxonMobil, et al, doesn't it?
I've heard this said before, but do you have any citations for it? It would strengthen your argument if you could point to actual quotes saying this.
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Leanan on March 18, 2006 - 2:24pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
From ASPO:

http://www.peakoil.ie/newsletters/649

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Halfin on March 18, 2006 - 7:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks; I was looking for old reports or quotes from the conventional analysts who were "confidently" predicting that North Sea oil would not peak until 2010. I wondered if they were really saying that and how confident they were.
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westexas on March 18, 2006 - 6:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
In addition to Leanan's link, Simmons was interviewed in the 1/02/06 issue of Barron's making essentially the same point, but he specifically noted that the top 10 majors were predicting a 2010 peak for the North Sea.  

In regard to the North Sea HL plot, I did it myself.  It's a beautiful--perfectly linear--plot, showing a Qt of 60 Gb.  Production peaked at 52% of Qt, and it has been downhill since then.  

My point has been and is that if the engineers can be that wrong about what--compared to Russia--is a piece of cake to evaluate, why can't they be that wrong about Russia?

BTW, my prediction is that Russian oil production will be down in 2006 versus 2005, probably the start of a very severe decline in production.

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Jerome a Paris on March 18, 2006 - 8:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Re Russian oil production, see the two articles by Leslie Dienes at the following link:

http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/jrl-2004-oil.cfm

She was not very optimistic about Russia's future production, almost 2 years ago already.

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Calorie on March 18, 2006 - 6:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
In a January 2, 2006 Barron's interview, Matt Simmons said

Can the Saudis keep their current production where it is for quite a while? That is certainly a likelihood. But there is a real but unquantifiable risk that it starts into the same type of decline we've seen in the North Sea. It is utterly obvious the North Sea oil peaked in 1999. In 1995, after a few hours of analysis, I made a presentation in Aberdeen saying with almost total certainty the North Sea would peak between 1998 and 2000. Yet the 10 major oil companies operating in the North Sea were confident the North Sea would not peak until 2010. They estimated by 2000 the U.K. and Norway would be producing 7.3 million barrels a day: the U.K. at 3.6 million and Norway at 3.7. It turns out in 1999 the U.K. and Norway produced just under 6.1 millions barrels a day, and by this summer they are estimated to be down to about 3.5 million barrels a day. You are talking about the most technically advanced oil companies in the world looking at their own fields and getting mesmerized by modern oil-field technology, and the mesmerization turns out to be a myth.

He doesn't say whether he used the HL method.

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118 comments on Saturday open thread

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