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63 comments on Iraq's Oil: The Greatest Prize Of All ?
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63 comments on Iraq's Oil: The Greatest Prize Of All ?
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So where are these Secret Hidden Super Giant Reserviors? The map you provided shows no evidence of their existence. Somebody must know where they are, right? The geology of the region is very well known, certainly all the good prospects have been explored and developed, I do not believe the IPC would have just developed the "lesser" prospects and hid in the dessert a couple of Ghawars. Could it not be this is all a myth that has simply grown with each re-telling?
There is no solid evidence here, it's all just opinion and speculation or exaggeration (I don't mean by you btw). While you've done a good job of pulling this all together, and the history is very interesting, it really doesn't go to prove your conclusion that the high estimates are the more likely. Obviously higher output than the present levels would be possible, as you suggest, in a different political reality.
I suspect the fact that you see this potential as moderating the future global decline of oil production is colouring your judgement. It's what you want to believe, and it's what the planners of the Iraq War wanted to believe.
I was careful in my wording in the post to say that I have no proof that reserves are as large as I think they are.
I think its clear that other people also think the same thing, though they could also be wrong.
It would be very interesting to see the data the Iraqi government (and BP and Shell) have - however I doubt that will ever happen - so we'll have to wait a decade or so to see what the truth of it is (as we see how much oil they produce).
".... all the good prospects have been explored and developed..."
why run seismic surveys, why drill exploratory wells ? a good prospect or a bad pospect doesnt mean anything until a well is drilled and tested.
If you are looking through resumes when trying to fill a job, do you decide to bring in the worst candidates for interviews first because "resumes don't tell the whole story"?
With regards to preliminary exploration, false positives are much more likely than false negatives. You start with where oil is more likely to be, whittle that down to where there are good prospects, and do seismic and maybe crop further and the drill the best ones. Money outlay increases dramatically along the way.
i am not ready to say there won't be significant future discoveries, in iraq. are you ?
resumes ? not much of an analog.
It called probability, informed by what is known of the geology. There is a lot more to it than "well, they haven't drilled there yet, so it must be as big as we can imagine".
Do you believe they are going to find the total volume equivalent of a Ghawar? I don't.
no. total discovered developed (remaining), discovered undeveloped and yet to be discovered could easily amount to more than 1 ghawar (ultimate). iraq's remaining may be greater than ksa's.
the pdf dave cohen cites below, claims that only 1/4 of 530 identified prospects (structures)have been drilled.
There are a few factors to keep in mind that invalidate the "all the easy oil has been found" idea:
1. When large fields were found historically, the findings were suppressed (as per Blair's book) - thus all the available data is suspect.
2. Iraq has rarely been in a position to do its own exploration - only for a period from 1973 to 1980 did they conduct a genuine exploratory program of note - during all other periods Iraq has had one form of turmoil or another (along with bouts of low oil prices) preventing a full survey of their resources.
3. During that period (as per Aleklett's link / graph above) they were very successful at finding oil.
4. This success was achieved even though they only had access to 2D seismological techniques, have only drilled shallow wildcat wells and have only touched 125 of 525 promising structures.
5. Recent exploration (where viable given security problems) in Kurdistan has been very successful.
Given all these factors I can't see how anyone could rule out Iraq having substantial, yet to be discovered reserves.
"The map you provided shows no evidence of their existence."
it looks like a complex area, so how can anyone assume that all the prospects have been drilled, or even identified ?
looks like a promising geological area, needs "a little" land work.