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As Robert pointed out, if Ghawar is in decline every oil field in the world that is, or was, producing one mbpd or more is in decline or crashing, and according to the Oil & Gas Journal, the only new one mbpd and larger field on the horizon won't even start producing, at best, until after 2010, and it won't exceed one mbpd, at best, until after 2020.
As I also pointed out, this was accompanied by a 20 million bpd worldwide capacity increase. Not exactly the example you want to use to bolster your argument.
We have argued this to the point of producing widespread nausea among readers, but the bottom line is that the available production data are supporting Deffeyes' prediction and my prediction.
That was a complete dodge of the issues I raised. I want to be sure the reader is clear. Which statement is accurate? A. The HL predicts a peak date; or B. The HL predicts a range of several years in which peak may occur? Isn't it true that if KSA production started going down in 2010, you could also say that it was consistent with the prediction? That is the point I want to make clear.
What you have done, in fact, is that say KSA will peak at some point between 50% and 60% of Qt, without making it clear that this can span 10 years or more. Then, when KSA production is down, claim that the HL predicted it. That is no different than me predicting that the AFC will win the Superbowl, and then as soon as they do I claim that I did predict it (even if it takes them 4 years to win it). The fact is, the HL does not give Deffeyes (or you) the resolution to make the sorts of claims that a country (or the world) will peak in a specific year.
Of course the HL method can't promise an exact day, month and year. But we can predict the most likely year.
Deffeyes predicted that 2006 was the the most likely year for a world crude production decline, and I predicted that 2006 was the most likely year for a Saudi crude oil production decline.
If you want to see what a crashing super giant field does to a region's production, take a look at Cantarell and Mexico, where David Shields is predicting about a 25% net decline rate for Mexico from 2007 to 2008.
Mexico and Saudi Arabia are two major oil exporting countries where one field, with a rapidly thinning oil column, accounts, or accounted, for more than half of each countries' production.
As I said yesterday, IMO, other than the production rates, the only real difference Pemex & Cantarell and Saudi Aramco and Ghawar is that Pemex has grudgingly admitted to the Cantarell decline/crash.
This is why I suspect that the initial Saudi decline/crash may be much more severe than what we saw in Texas.
I have previously--and repeatedly--described these two fields as two warning beacons burning brightly in the night sky, heralding the onset of Peak Oil.
I just want to mention again how instructive the exchanges between WT and RR have been for me.
Both men bring depth and breadth of understanding to the topic, terrific analytical abilities, and a great deal of civility.
My heart-felt thanks to both!
And now, back to the regularly scheduled discussions....!
Lets get some error bars once we know the confidence limits I think that a lot of the wrangling will dissipate.
In the short term accept my +/- 4mbd interval till we can narrow it.
I'm guessing but I suspect this gives a 10 year spread on world HL plots.
In any case I'd love to see someone with the numbers just show the variance in a world HL plot say using a 2% and 4% relative variance.
I'm guessing but I suspect this gives a 10 year spread on world HL plots.
And you nailed what I am getting at. I think one could scientifically defend something like an HL with a 10 year margin of error. Historically, you could show that this would have worked in the past. My criticism of Deffeyes specifically is that he has taken a tool with 10 year resolution and shouted to everyone that peak was in 2005. Such claims won't be taken seriously, and do much for fostering the "Peak Oilers are crackpots" reputation.
I understand that this doesn't matter to some. But I post here under my real name, and I have a career in the oil industry, so credibility probably has a higher priority to me than it does to the average anonymous poster.
Seems to me that this is basically saying that the precise peak of production doesn't matter but the 'precise' plateau (+- 5 yrs) matters. I believe this to be true as well. Then the question becomes, "Are we on the Peak Oil Plateau?" It looks like we are, so what if we have an upward blip in '07 or '08 that becomes the actual peak. Only thing that would matter would be a sustained increase over the next few years.
Then the question is, "When do we reach the end of the plateau?"
Bravo !
Correct and further more even the best data we have has errors far greater than the reported error ranges. The number of times its adjusted should indicate how poor we know our own oil production. My rule of thumb is we basically lose the entire production of Iran in the world totals. This sounds like a lot but its only a few percent plus or minus.
I'd love to see some of the number crunchers on the site extract a plausible error term for some of the numbers we rely on. Next I agree with Robert that these intrinsic errors cause the HL methods to themselves have a confidence range it would be nice to get a handle on what this is.
Overall it would be beneficial for everyone to understand what we know and don't know. Statistical error analysis is sorely needed.
Next looking at the size of the problem we face which was shown recently as a cube of oil measuring over a mile points out that the time of peak oil is not that important if its 30 years away all the better for us.
In hindsight we should have moved away from oil when production in the US peaked in the 70 and Europe should have done a far better job managing production from the North Sea.
Africa and the Middle East would have been far saner places if oil was viewed as a national resource to help create a real economy. The same for Russia. But as the saying goes don't cry over spilled milk. Recognize that we have had ample time to address this issue and valid and compelling reasons have existed for 30 years. Even now we can see that the failure of Jimmy Carters initiatives has resulted in a world thats not a happy place.
The possibility that we may have already peaked and the number of scenarios that point to a peak in the near future should only spur us to act on converting our economies from oil. The chance of a peak now or in the near future should not be required for us to act.
To compare to another overriding issue facing us. It looks like we may be too late on global warming lets not do the same for oil. We as a world are facing a increasing number of major worldwide problems if we continue to fail to act on some of them doomsday scenarios have a much higher probability of becoming reality. I'd be happy to see the world proactively do one thing right in my lifetime. Here is a list.
1.) Global Warming
2.) Population
3.) Water
4.) Food
5.) Other resources depletion ( oil water etc)
6.) Efficient cheap housing/transport
7.) Globalization and economic equality.
And more these are in order of relative importance notice that oil is not our biggest problem but they are not unrelated since all our other problems result in our inability to solve the Global Warming one.
WRT your comments on the degree of accuracy, i was shocked when i received some model data for the TrendLines Scenarios that was six decimal places. With their time range of 150 years, i usually round to the nearest mbd whether its Peak Rate or Exhaustion.
On RR's point on dates, some modelers are still using up to a ten year range. This commenced with Colin Campbell in 1991, but the practice is no longer the norm. Most nail a particular year.
Visitors to my site over the last know that since 2004 i have used the ASPO data to define a month and year for Peak Conventional Oil (April 2005) and Peak All Liquids (October 2012) for the half-way crossover of consumption (not supply). Each month, we analyse new data on past consumption and URR to refine these dates, but our experience has been that both dates move thru a 36-month range. Using season or Year would be more appropriate but is not as sexy.
URR Estimates are usually quoted as low as three decimal places (3.003-Tb or 1 billion barrels). This is somewhat reasonable as the scenario applications require accuracy to 25 billion barrels over the 150 year parameter.
Monthly and quarterly reporting revisions moves thru about a +/- range up to 1-mbd, hence the three decimal reporting seems ludicrous; and is more a reflection of reporting from small production nations.
Jean Laherrere has been a practioner of HL for two decades. Anyone following his work would have to agree that the above comments that it is accurate to only a +/- of five years is fair.
Form a practical standpoint any series of measurements is only as accurate as the least accurate individual measurements. That is if you have a measurement of a rectangle with one pair of sides at 10.05 and the other at 6, your answer can only be 60. If the first measurement is 6.0 your answer is 60.3, never 60.30. In the real world any thing that is being measured by inference, more than three significant figures is a opium dream.
The number of significant figures that are appropriate should depend on the margin of error of whatever the analysis is. With a very tight margin of error I could see four or five significant figures or even more. Obviously, not the situation in the crude oil production world. Might have relevance in the spectrographic analysis world or the electron microscopy world.
Trouble is, when looking up data, this information is almost never reported with the data, so we are left to guess, and guessing on the fuzzy side is usually the best policy.