Peak Oil Update - October 2006: Production Forecasts and EIA Oil Production Numbers
Posted by Khebab on October 16, 2006 - 11:36am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari, bp, chris skrebowski, eia, logistic, loglets, m. king hubbert, oil, oil prices, peak oil, rembrandt koppelaar, stuart staniford, update [list all tags]
[Update by Khebab on 10/17/06 at 9:40 AM EDT]I made some corrections in Table I and added Deffeyes forecast.
An update on the last production numbers from the EIA along with different oil production forecasts.
Fig 1.- World oil production (EIA Monthly) and various forecasts (2000-2020). Click to Enlarge.
An update on the last production numbers from the EIA along with different oil production forecasts.
Fig 1.- World oil production (EIA Monthly) and various forecasts (2000-2020). Click to Enlarge.
Data
sources for the production numbers:
Most of the datasets above are compiled in an EditGrid spreadsheet.
Fig 2.- World oil production (Crude oil + NGL) and various forecasts (1940-2050). Click to Enlarge.
Fig 3.- Production forecasts assuming no visible peak. Click to Enlarge.
Fig 4.- Forecasts by PeakOilers based on bottom-up methodologies. Click to Enlarge.
Fig 5.- Forecasts by PeakOilers using curve fitting methodologies. Click to Enlarge.
Fig 6.- Year-on-Year production growth. Click to Enlarge.
Table I. Summary of all the forecasts (figures are in mbpd) as well as the last EIA estimates.
September 2006
- Production data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2006 (Crude oil + NGL).
- EIA data (monthly and annual productions up to July 2006) for crude oil and lease condensate (noted CO) on which I added the NGPL production (noted CO+NGL).
Most of the datasets above are compiled in an EditGrid spreadsheet.
Fig 2.- World oil production (Crude oil + NGL) and various forecasts (1940-2050). Click to Enlarge.
Business as Usual
- EIA's International Energy Outlook 2006, reference case (Table E4).
- IEA total liquid demand forecast for 2006 and 2007 (Table1.xls).
- A simple demographic model based on the observation that the oil produced per capita has been roughly constant for the last 26 years around 4.4496 barrels/capita/year (Crude Oil + NGL). The world population forecast employed is the UN 2004 Revision Population Database (medium variant).
Fig 3.- Production forecasts assuming no visible peak. Click to Enlarge.
PeakOilers: Bottom-Up Analysis
- Chris Skrebowski's megaprojects database (see discussion here).
- The ASPO forecast from the last newsletter (#70): I took the production numbers for 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2050 and then interpolated the data (spline) for the missing years. I added the previous forecast issued one year and two years ago (newsletter #58 and #46 repectively). There was no revision since August 2006.
- Rembrandt H. E. M. Koppelaar (Oil Supply Analysis 2006 - 2007): "Between 2006 and 2010 nearly 25 mbpd of new production is expected to come on-stream leading to a production (all liquids) level of 93-94 mbpd (91 mbpd for CO+NGL) in 2010 with the incorporation of a decline rate of 4% over present day production".
- Koppelaar Oil Production Outlook 2005-2040 - Foundation Peak Oil Netherlands (November 2005 Edition).
- The WOCAP model from Samsam Bakhtiari (2003). The forecast is for crude oil plus NGL.
Fig 4.- Forecasts by PeakOilers based on bottom-up methodologies. Click to Enlarge.
PeakOilers: Curve Fitting
The two following results are for Crude Oil plus NGL (CO+NGL) production:- Professor Kenneth S. Deffeyes forecast (Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak): Logistic curve fit applied on crude oil only with URR= 2013 Gb and peak date around November 24th, 2005.
- Logistic curves derived from the application of Hubbert Linearization technique by Stuart Staniford (see this post).
- Results of the Loglet analysis.
Fig 5.- Forecasts by PeakOilers using curve fitting methodologies. Click to Enlarge.
Production Growth
Fig 6.- Year-on-Year production growth. Click to Enlarge.
| Forecast | 2005 | 2006 | 2010 | 2015 | Peak Date | Peak Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Liquids | ||||||
| Observed (All Liquids) | 84.34 | 84.22 | NA | NA | 2006-07 | 85.03 |
| Koppelaar (2005) | 84.06 | 85.78 | 89.21 | 87.98 | 2011 | 89.58 |
| EIA (IEO, 2006) | 82.70 | 84.50 | 91.60 | 98.30 | ? | ? |
| IEA (2006) | 83.38 | 84.40 | NA | NA | ? | ? |
| Crude oil + NGL | ||||||
| Observed (EIA) | 81.23 | 81.15 | NA | NA | 2005-05 | 81.77 |
| ASPO-70 | 80.00 | 81.90 | 90.00 | 85.00 | 2010 | 90.00 |
| ASPO-58 | 81.00 | 82.03 | 85.00 | 79.18 | 2010 | 85.00 |
| ASPO-45 | 81.00 | 80.95 | 80.00 | 73.77 | 2005 | 81.00 |
| Koppelaar (2006) | 81.76 | 82.31 | 91.00 | NA | 2010 | 91.00 |
| Bakhtiari (2003) | 80.24 | 80.89 | 77.64 | 69.51 | 2006 | 80.89 |
| Skrebowski (2006) | 80.90 | 81.42 | 87.32 | NA | >2010 | >87.92 |
| Staniford (High) | 77.45 | 77.92 | 79.01 | 78.51 | 2011-10 | 79.08 |
| Staniford (Med) | 75.81 | 75.94 | 75.52 | 73.00 | 2007-05 | 75.98 |
| Staniford (Low) | 70.46 | 70.13 | 67.92 | 63.40 | 2002-07 | 70.88 |
| Loglets | 81.12 | 82.14 | 84.65 | 83.26 | 2012-01 | 84.80 |
| Constant barrels/capita | 78.81 | 79.73 | 83.42 | 88.01 | 2050 | 110.64 |
| Crude oil + lease condensate | ||||||
| Observed (EIA) | 73.49 | 73.38 | NA | NA | 2005-12 | 74.05 |
| ASPO-70 | 73.10 | 74.45 | 78.00 | 72.00 | 2010 | 78.00 |
| ASPO-58 | 73.00 | 73.80 | 76.00 | 69.50 | 2010 | 76.00 |
| ASPO-58 | 72.80 | 72.56 | 71.00 | 63.55 | 2005 | 72.80 |
| Deffeyes (2004) | 70.03 | 70.02 | 69.11 | 66.07 | 2005-12 | 70.04 |
Table I. Summary of all the forecasts (figures are in mbpd) as well as the last EIA estimates.
Next update in November.
Previous Update:September 2006
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The other conclusion I can draw is that we will peak no later than the 2010 timeframe, assuming we aren't all ready at the plateau. If both Ghawar and Cantarell are collapsing as reported, all bets are off.
"good night nurse," as Archie would have said.
It appears to me that OPEC is becoming increasingly confident that there is no competition out there that could realistically reduce call on their oil to any meaningful degree.
Their population has doubled or more, and they need the money.
They were terrified of Carter's coal-to-liquids project, but CTL is now slowed down by global warming concerns. Corn ethanol can't scale to large volumes, cellulosic ethanol has an uncertain development path, and electrification of transportation will take a little while.
They'll develop eventually, but it will take a little while, and by that time the royal families will be in Europe living on their bank accounts.
They are building refineries because the new oil is so poor in quality that most worldwide refineries can't process it. They don't want to produce oil they can't sell due to worldwide refinery limitations. As you know, we are not building new ones in the US, although they are certainly being modified & expanded. There are significant pollution problems with the sour, contaminated oil which would probably make licensing & environmental regs very hard to overcome here for example.
Alternatives to oil have large R&D and manufacturing plant investment costs, and long lead times. These barriers to entry have protected oil.
Typically, they also have low operating costs. Once built, such plants will stay in operation even if oil returns to a low price. We have seen this with CTL.
More importantly, there are large unknowns in R&D. If a great deal of $ is invested in R&D, and effective & cheap alternatives are found and made to work (such as Eestor ultracapacitors), oil could be displaced surprisingly quickly. Even if we only get the incremental progress that is pretty reliable, next-gen li-ion batteries will likely be competitive with oil in the next 5 years. Once that tipping point is reached electric transportation might actually become better than oil in every way, and oil could be displaced relatively quickly.
We could have astronomical oil prices for 10-15 years, only to have them crash as the growth curve for alternatives catches up with demand and the remaining oil becomes largely obsolete for transportation.
I think the Saudi's know this (though much of OPEC does not), but know they have mostly lost the power to cap prices. OTOH, they still have some power to choose how much prices drop from their recent peak, as supply has caught up with demand for the moment. Even if depletion will kick in fairly soon and raise prices again, it would be in their best interest to let prices crash for a year or so (or as close to that as they can manage) before then to kill off alternatives for as long as possible. I think they aren't doing so because they want to maximise revenue for the short-term, to make their citizens (and other OPEC members) happy.
Or maybe they're not that smart. Yamani (SA's oil minister in the 80's) knew this stuff...
Not so. Oil can be replaced relatively easily with electricity.
Let's review the background. First, electric vehicles are about 8 times more efficient than your average gasoline vehicle (1,600 watt-hours/mile vs 200 whrs/mile). Second, there is no real threat of electrical shortages: the articles you're thinking deal with peak supply/demand and lack of investment in infrastructure, rather than shortages of energy supplies. There's plenty of excess capacity during off-peak times: the average utilization of the US grid is less than 50% (440GW average vs 905 peak capacity). Oil & Gas supply only 21% of US electricity, and can be relatively easily replaced with wind (preferably) and coal.
The average demand in the US is about 440 gigawatts (GW), and to replace all 210M light vehicles (cars, SUV's, pickups, etc) with electric vehicles would require only about 57GW, or an increase of 13%, which could easily be done at night with excess capacity, and largely from wind power.
Electricity is the easy part, and is much cheaper than oil ($.02/mile, versus $.10 per mile for gasoline). Replacing oil as a portable source of transportation energy is the hard part.
I like the Tesla too.
I think of hybrids as the vanguard of the movement to electric vehicles. The drivetrain of hybrids like the Prius or Escape are roughly 40% electric, despite the fact that the original source of their electricity is gasoline. With 1.8% of the market, that means that the market is already about .7% electric.
As hybrids grow, and plug-ins are introduced, the light-vehicle market will gradually transform, and as batteries improve the EV range can expand.
The nice thing about these hybrids is that in an emergency they could be upgraded to plugins quite easily, thus greatly reducing the 20 year adaptation window assumed by people like Hirsch. I wish the US would break past it's current paralysis (in part due to the current Pres. administration) and greatly accelerate progress, but fortunately we are moving forward with some kind of noticeable speed.
Are you in PG&E's service territory? I understand they're installing time of day meters in the next year or so - are they going to do that for you? I would think that would help with making PV pay, as you would be able to sell power to PG&E at a high rate during the day, and charge an EV at night at much lower rates.
"However, the spare capacity, as I understand it, includes hydro, natl gas and other generation that really can't sustain an all out 24/7 production."
As I noted previously, I don't believe there's a real danger of the lights going out Mad-Max-wise, as there's always coal (and nuclear in the longer-run) as a last resort. California is an interesting case, as it has made a policy decision not to use coal, and therefore uses gas for about 50% of it's power generation. It does have a little nuclear, which gets more important at night. In the following discussion we have to keep in mind that during all the acrobatics CA will go through to deal with electrical generation that coal will still be there as a last-resort - I don't think anyone can realistically believe that CA would not use coal & nuclear if they were the only choices to prevent serious, long-lasting blackouts.
As far as off-peak energy production goes, you're right, nat gas turbines aren't really meant for base-load production. Wind is the clear answer. Texas just passed CA for windmill installation, but I expect CA has a fair amount in the planning process, including a lot of replacements of older, small inefficient turbines. Altamonte is an important site, which unfortunately has real bird problems (realistically the only site in the country to have such problems). I suspect some wind power from mid-west states, and West Texas might go all the way to CA.
One possibility for CA are offshore floating windturbine structures , which are based on proven oilrig technology but still in development. They'd reduce costs, raise reliability, take care of visibility problems, and I suspect could be sited to solve the heatwave peak output decline problem. Another is kite-based windturbines, which I believe will be faster to install, can take advantage of stronger & more reliable high winds, and have reduced structural costs - they're still in R&D, though, and more speculative.
Peak power is a little more difficult. On-shore wind in CA may only provide about 15% of it's normal output during serious heatwaves. In the longrun solar is the obvious complement, as it's at it's best during such heatwaves. I understand that CA is hoping to get about 5-6% of it's peak power from PV over the next 10 years (3GW vs 50GW peak capacity). Here it's important to remember that PV prices are artificially high right now due to soaring demand and subsidy programs; that underlying PV costs are falling quickly; supply is ramping up; and building integrated PV will slash Balance of System costs, so eventually PV consumer pricing will fall sharply. . Also, there's pretty good indication that the A/C peak demand is pretty artificial, and could be seriously reduced by time-of-day metering and other demand management programs. Electric vehicles will help a great deal here, with planned charging and even Vehicle-to-grid peak supply.
CA is likely to have some difficult times coping with nat gas depletion, especially without using coal. The energy is there, but they'll have to move fast to take advantage of it. In the meantime I suspect electicity imports to CA, and rates, will go up.
Thanks very much for your post. It's nice to see people actually think these issues through with real numbers.
I've come to the same conclusions based on these calculations. It's great to get these independent confirmations.
But it's very nice to hear that it makes a difference to people.
Interesting to see again how Colin's projections are the most optimistic up to 2011. But note that for Crude solely his curves are very close to the real thing (especially on the ASPO-58 model).
Also very important to note is the plateau in Crude production since mid-2004. When will it go over 75 Md/d?
Does anybody know what liquids are on the non-Crude non-NGPL group?
Khebab, I think there's a major modeler left out: Laherrère. Would it be too much to ask you to include his curves in November?
Agreed. The big change in the ASPO forecast (between #70 and #58) seems to come from a NGPL increase. Bakhtiari's projection is the oldest and fairly accurate so far.
Re: Does anybody know what liquids are on the non-Crude non-NGPL group?
from the EIA website:
Re: Khebab, I think there's a major modeler left out: Laherrère. Would it be too much to ask you to include his curves in November?
You're right, I just didn't have time to include his last forecast. It will be included in the next update.
You are slowly moving mountains here at TOD.
Ron Patterson
But mostly, thanks again for your efforts.
Campbell has some simplistic modelling of NGL's that does not account for real growth in world natural gas production, and that does not include that naturgal gas from mature fields normally becomes "drier" with time.
That is the GOR (Gas Oil Ratio or Gas NGL Ratio if you prefer) normally increases with time for natural gas fields, thus less NGL's from the same amount of natural gas.