Stories tagged with "oil"

What Does "Peak Oil” Mean to You?

The “Don’t Fear the 2010s” article written by Nick Gillespie of the Wall Street Journal featured a section on Peak Oil and, after reading it, I found myself uttering the famous words of Homer Simpson: “Doh.” The article claims that "something always gets in the way" of peak oil, and since no clear peak has occured globally, Peak Oil is and will remain unimportant. Although early discussions about peak oil involved estimations of the actual date of the peak, today the discussion has transcended its past mathematical proclivities to include more complex (and more meaningful) issues. Let’s examine some of the more important insights to be gained from the discussion of peak oil.

Drilling Rigs and Drilling Ships

The debate about how much oil is left and recoverable in the world has brought increasing attention to the recovery of oil and natural gas from offshore. And while I suspect that most of those who comment on this site are very familiar with all the terms, some of the more general readership may not be. Let me, therefore, explain just a bit about some of the different words that are being used here - with references and videos, where I can find them - to pictures of the different types of structures that are being used. And if I miss some, please chip in either to ask or answer. Previous posts in this series can be found at the tech talk link.


Drilling barge

Workover Equipment

When we began this series of tech talks, a drilling rig was anything that punched a hole through the ground, to get at the oil or natural gas underneath. Once a hole is drilled, however, there is often other work that needs to be done on the well, but now the infrastructure that helped when we drilled the well starts to get in the way when we need to do other things. And so the tool will change to what is known as a workover rig. (Though these could be the old rigs left in place on a platform after the production wells are drilled - just to keep life clear).


Truck-mounted workover rig from Diesel Power Shares

Making holes and cracks around oil and gas wells

This is a continuation of the tech talks, discussing technical topics, that I write on Sundays. For the past few weeks I have been writing about some of the techniques used in producing the gas from shales, and that will likely continue for another week or two. Because of the need to condense the topic into a relatively short post I would ask those familiar with the topics to understand that I have had to shorten the description and gloss over some details in order to keep the main theme clear. But further comments to help readers understand the techniques better (or questions when it isn't) are appreciated.


Equipment used for hydraulic fracturing a well (Primer)

More natural gas controversy

Monday, November 2, Arthur Berman wrote in his blog:

Pressure from Petrohawk helps cancel World Oil column

In an act of extraordinary courage, a top Petrohawk executive threatened to cancel his free subscription to World Oil if the magazine continued to publish my column. Today, John Royall, President and CEO for Gulf Publishing, cancelled my November column.

I have accordingly resigned as contributing editor.

Heading Out (Dave Summers) and I have been talking about the issues Arthur Berman raises for quite a while now. Most recently, Dave wrote a post called Shale Gas Estimates Perhaps Optimistic - An Interesting and Worrying Talk at ASPO.

So what are the issues involved?

Reflections from ASPO: Contradiction, EROI, and Future Energy Supplies



One feature of this year’s ASPO conference that I most enjoyed was the contradiction amongst presentations. Marcio Mello gave an animated talk on Sunday night about the pre-salt formations off the coast of Brazil quoting that there are upwards of 500 billion barrels of oil available, an extravagant estimate that peak oilers are unused to hearing. Monday morning two talks on natural gas were juxtaposed in tone and content, one claiming that natural gas is the “American Treasure” and the other claiming that shale gas is marginally profitable, let alone a “treasure.”

Contradiction in this kind of academic setting magnifies the awareness of all involved by broadening the scope of the discussion.

REVIEW: A Preliminary Investigation of Energy Return on Energy Investment for Global Oil and Gas Production

This post reviews a paper by Nate Gagnon, Charles Hall and Lysle Brinker titled: “A Preliminary Investigation of Energy Return on Energy Investment for Global Oil and Gas Production,” published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Energies. The lead author was my colleague for two years at SUNY-ESF and the second author is currently my Ph.D. advisor and has published numerous guest posts here on The Oil Drum. See here for a list of previous posts relating to work by Dr. Charles Hall, and here to download a full-text PDF of this paper.


EROI of Global Oil and Gas Production

Energy Journal Roundup: July 2009

Feature Article

Raukas, A., Punning, J., 2009, Environmental Problems in the Estonian oil shale industry, Volume 2, 2009, page 723 – 728



The Energy Journal Roundup is a monthly post listing citations and abstracts from some of the peer-reviewed literature published in various energy journals around the world.

Peak Oil Update - July 2009: Production Forecasts and EIA Oil Production Numbers

An update on the latest production numbers from the EIA along with graphs/charts of different oil production forecasts. 

World oil production (EIA Monthly) and various
forecasts (2001-2027)
World oil production (EIA Monthly) for crude oil + NGL. The median forecast is calculated from 15 models that are predicting a peak before 2020 (Bakhtiari, Smith, Staniford, Loglets, Shock model, GBM, ASPO-[70,58,45], Robelius Low/High, HSM,Duncan&Youngquist). 95% of the predictions  sees a production peak between 2008 and 2010 at 77.5 - 85.0 mbpd (The 95% forecast variability area in yellow is computed using a bootstrap technique). The magenta area is the 95% confidence interval for the population-based model. Click to Enlarge. 

Energy Journal Roundup: June 2009

Feature Article

Aguilera, R.F., 2009, Oil Supply in Central and South America, Energy Policy, Vol. 37, is. 8, pp. 2916



The Energy Journal Roundup is a monthly post reviewing the peer-reviewed literature published in various energy journals from around the world.