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237 comments on Asking one of the less comfortable questions about our energy future...

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tonyw on July 10, 2008 - 10:33am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi WT,

Would you expect the decline rate to be a steady number say 6% = 5mbpd every year or would it be 6% of the reduced figure? e.g. in the second year would you expect to see 79 - 5 (6% of 85) or 79 - 6% of 79?

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westexas on July 10, 2008 - 10:52am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If we were able to maintain flat production, we would need to add about 5 mbpd every year, assuming a 6% gross decline rate, but the point is, IMO, that Peak Oil is basically the story of the rise and fall of the big oil fields, and once the big fields start declining, we can't offset the big field declines with new smaller fields, which is what the Texas & North Sea case histories show:

http://www.theoildrum.com/files/TexasAndNorthSea.png

Matt Simmons defines the gross decline rate as the decline rate from existing wells and the net decline rate as the decline after new wells are put on line. Basically, with stable or growing production from the big fields, we tend to have increasing production. When the big fields roll over, we tend to have a net decline rate. Texas has shown a long term net decline rate of -4%/year, while the North Sea has shown -4.5%/year.

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netfind on July 10, 2008 - 8:58pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Simmons has "The Oil Pyramid" chart in Twilight (Appendix B) showing that of about 4100 significant fields, the 14 largest put out 20% of our oil. I don't know what percent of these old elephant fields have had horizontal well production, but if they all have the 10% variety of sudden decline, this forces all the rest of the fields, over 4000 of them, to increase production 2.5% each year just to offset the 14 big fields' decline rate after water flood of the horizontal wells. That's a non-14-big-field global production increase of 2.5% each year just to keep production flat and falling behind demand.

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237 comments on Asking one of the less comfortable questions about our energy future...

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