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21 comments on A little more on CERA

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James Hamilton on September 7, 2005 - 8:32am

I interpreted the CERA list as intended to be illustrative whereas the CS list was intended to be exhaustive. For this reason, I took the fact that the CERA list included a number of large projects not appearing on the CS list as an indication that CERA had conducted a more exhaustive inventory than had CS. If so, that could be one explanation for why CERA believes that more production will be coming online than CS was expecting.

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Heading Out on September 7, 2005 - 9:19am

Grin - well actually if I add up the numbers I cited for total production and giving Primorsk 150,000 bd and Dharkovin 160,000 bd I get a total of 2.68 mbd which is more than the 2.4 mbd that CERA are quoting. So I am not sure how to interpret this yet. (Bear in mind they are totalling toward a 2010 data so it would be reasonable to assume that the projects would reach their targets by that time).

Since the criteria for the two surveys were slightly different one would expect some discrepancy, and possibly some correction due to a better evaluation of the reserves with time. Though I note that while some go up, there are also a couple that are going down. And more that have been delayed. It's a puzzle, but bit by bit we might assemble it. It is also something that I plan on keeping an eye on, just to see how some of these numbers pan out.

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Stuart Staniford on September 7, 2005 - 9:34am

It seems to me we could really use an "open-source" bottom-up model for future supply/depletion, or perhaps a set of models under different scenarios "pessimistic", "neutral", "optimistic" or whatever. Then we could track/update/improve it over time, and others could take the base data and build their own models to test some hypothesis. I'm thinking "open-source" in the sense of open-source software in which a group collaborates to share the work of maintaining something, and the data is licensed freely to the public. Usually open source software ends up at least as good as, and maybe better than, the expensive proprietary equivalents.

Such a model might be maintained in Excel? I think a tricky thing is a good data architecture. Eg, one wants to be able to do things like discover that some field has been delayed by six months and only have to change one number to recompute all the scenarios.

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cezar on September 7, 2005 - 11:06am

I second your idea, Stuart. We should try to do scenario analysis in Excel to understand what sort of spectrum of realistic options is to be considered.

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