The Oil Drum

26 comments on CIBC in more detail, and the first Chevron debate

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JD on January 13, 2006 - 7:28pm

Since the absolute volume of oil hasn't changed one has to accept that this is shifting production to the left.

I agree with you that the OOIP does not change. The question is whether technology changes the recovery rate (=% of OOIP ultimately recovered). In order for your reasoning to work, I believe you are committed to the position that technology does not change the recovery rate. That seems a little extreme. What scientific evidence do you have to support that view?

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Dave Cohen on January 13, 2006 - 10:00pm

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.

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JD on January 14, 2006 - 5:43am

Dave, I'm not trying to be antagonistic. The point you raised is a core issue, and deserves to be looked at very closely, not glossed over. It's the main difference between the later peakers (Lynch, Yergin) and the early peakers (Campbell, Simmons etc.) Lynch says URR keeps increasing due to improved technology, and Colin Campbell says no -- but keeps increasing his URR. To me that suggests Lynch is onto something.

I think there is a different URR associated with each successive level of technology. For example, suppose you went back to the day of Colonel Drake, and froze technology at that level. How much total oil could you recover if you deployed Colonel Drake technology to its maximal capability? That would be the URR with Colonel Drake level technology. It's clear that deepwater oil is not included in that URR. Which leads me to believe that the technological advances since Colonel Drake's time are associated with a larger URR. You can recover more oil with better technology.

That doesn't mean that peak oil is infinitely far into the future. It means that it might be farther into the future (or less serious) than you expect if you don't analyze technological gains very carefully.

Anyway, it's a complicated but important subject. I hope we can talk about in more detail sometime on The Oil Drum. Thanks for the link. I'll read it.

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Heading Out on January 14, 2006 - 12:48am

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.