Stories tagged with "north field"

IEA WEO 2008 - NGLs to the Rescue?

Posted by Rune Likvern on December 5, 2008 - 9:48am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: bp statistical review 2008, condensates, eia ipm, iea weo 2008, ncs, ngl, north field, opec, sleipner, south pars [list all tags]

According to the IEA World Energy Outlook 2008, p. 261:

Output of natural gas liquids — light hydrocarbons that exist in liquid form underground and that are produced together with natural gas and recovered in separation facilities or processing plants — is expected to grow rapidly over the Outlook period. Global NGL production is projected to almost double, from 10.5 mb/d in 2007 to just under 20 mb/d in 2030.

One can see from IEA's chart of World Oil Production by Source that the growth of natural gas liquids, or NGLs, is being depended on as a significant contributor to total world oil production:


World Oil Production by Source, Reference Scenario, shown as Figure 11.1 on page 250 of IEA WEO 2008.

In this post, I will document that there is good reason to believe that the IEA WEO 2008 projections in the reference scenario overshoots the likely world production of NGLs by as much as 35 - 50 % by 2030.

One way of estimating expected NGLs is as a ratio to natural gas production, representing the wetness or dryness of gas. One would expect this ratio to decline over time, based on what normally has been observed from fields, areas and regions with good quality data. Instead, the IEA is forecasting that this ratio will increase in the future.

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Questions About the World's Biggest Natural Gas Field

Posted by Dave Cohen on June 9, 2006 - 6:41pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: iran, lng, north field, peak natural gas, qatar, south pars [list all tags]

[editor's note, by Dave] Generously, Matt Simmons and SCI have given me permission to reference their report Simmons Oil Monthly - Qatar, by Robert A. Kessler, April 24, 2006. Matt wanted me to "alert readers that SCI made a major exception to their strict rules of only sending their institutional research to their institutional clients". My thanks to Matt and SCI for making this report available. I believe it will appear soon on the Simmons & Company International website. I'll do an update when that happens.

Update [2006-6-11 15:33:22 by Dave]: The SCI report I used for this story is now available there. Simmons Oil Monthly - Qatar (large pdf warning).

Without much fanfare, Qatar announced a moratorium on new development of the natural gas North Field basin, a decision that had actually been taken in 2005. At the same time, in a recent presentation by Matt Simmons entitled Tight Oil Supplies, we run into this intriguing slide (#44, big pdf warning).


The North Field/South Pars Natural Gas Complex
Figure 1 -- Click to Enlarge

This report will go into considerable detail about the future role of the North Field/South Pars natural gas field, it's size and importance, the reasons for the moratorium and finally important questions about both the geology and proven reserves of the field. As Simmons notes in his slide, there is a "large degree of uncertainty regarding [the] true potential [of this field]". The topic is important regarding the uncommon phrase "peak natural gas" on a global scale. As we know, natural gas production has already peaked in North America.

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