The Oil Drum

I don't want to speak for HO but I don't believe he is talking about original oil in place (OOIP), he think he is talking about URR from the fields in question. In my story here I referred to a paper Technology and Petroleum Exhaustion: Evidence from Two Mega-Oilfields. You might look at that. Do you read what we write here?

I've looked at the nonsense on your Peak Oil Debunked website. I made an assertion and both HO and me have now provided some evidence to back it up. In science--you are perhaps unfamiliar with the nature of this subject--a hypothesis is stated and as new evidence comes to light, this hypothesis is either contradicted (falsified in the language of Popper) or the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis. So why don't you provide us with some evidence that shows that we're wrong? Then we can talk about it. In some cases I've seen, it appears EOR does perhaps seem to increase the URR. My original assertion may not apply in all cases but does seem to apply in those cases where we have the best production history. What's gained on the front end from EOR is lost on the backend from very large decline rates. Unfortunately, there is uncertainty because the URR is not actually known beforehand with an unshakeable degree of confidence. However, that is why Stuart and others use the Hubbert Linearization--to predict the URR after a field is mature. The URR seems to be known to a good degree of confidence after approximately 50% of its predicted production has occurred but may be inferred before that in its production history using a statistical line fit. The method seems to work pretty well in the best test cases we have. Stuart has been working this out for months now with more precision than anyone else, IMHO, working in this field.

I am not writing this just to address a jerk like you--it's also general information for readers of TOD. Does the word "troll" have any particular meaning to you in this context? Please, contribute some useful information if you have any. TOD is reality-based. If you're looking for anecdotal evidence, go visit Mike Ruppert's website or some other appropriate place (like the EIA forecasts, the IEA forecasts--these are especially recommended--, CERA, Lynch or Mr. Abiotic Oil himself, Jerome Corsi. Otherwise, get lost.

It's a time function.  If you are patiently willing to wait (and I think Matt Simmons quotes a family in Houston that has been) you can continue to draw oil at a slow rate from a field for a very long time.  Most of the time folk are a little more impatient.  I did a post on this some time ago, trying to explain the problems of rapid draw down.  They relate to the development of flow channels in the rock, and the fact that the faster flow goes through a channel the more it wears and the wider it gets, and the greater the amount of relative flow that goes through it in contrast with the situation where a lower relative pressure will draw more evenly over the surface of the deposit, but will pull oil out at a much slower rate. With the creation of flow channels, the oil that is in the rock around them can often get stranded, and is not recovered.  Thus while the instantaeous rate of recovery goes up, the long-term absolute recovery goes down.  One of the intents of MRC is to reduce this by spreading the well coverage more intensely through the reservoir.  However while it reduces the distance that some of the oil has to travel, it does not overcome the problems of that higher differential pressures create with  flow channel development.

In Simmons' book, he states that recovery has been increased but only in certain cases. I'll have to dig through it again to provide his specific instances.  I suppose I should do that when I have more energy. My recollection is that he doesn't feel that the technology will make a significant difference in the overall picture, that in some cases it may result in reduced total recovery, and that the temporary boost in production has led to complacency in the past, which was shattered when the fields hit sudden sharp declines.