The Oil Drum

[editor's note, by Prof. Goose] This is a guest post by Rembrandt Koppelaar, Chairman of ASPO Netherlands.

In the discussion about the date of peak oil production there is often a lack of a common framework. This makes it difficult to compare arguments concerning the date of peak oil / liquids production. In this post I outline a set of clear suppositions that, I hope, will help to understand the issue better.

The ASPO-USA folks requested me to offer my opinions on Chris Skrebowski et al's 2006 megaproject report, and I had an interesting email debate with them today. Here are my thoughts on it, now that I've had a (middle of the night) chance to study it.

The executive summary is that while I think this report

• was a good deal of work and is a considerable service to the public
• has some improvements from prior "bottom-up" reports

nonetheless, to no-one's surprise perhaps,

• I don't think this methodology is reliable at this time.
• I disagree with the conclusions of the report.

The EIA is out with the new International Petroleum Monthly which covers through January. (They actually published it March 31st, but I was out of town). Here's the updated plateau graph with the IEA and EIA numbers. As in December, the EIA was slightly cheerier about January than the IEA was. However, both agencies agree on a drop in production from the high in December.

Average daily oil production, by month, from various estimates. Click to enlarge. Believed to be all liquids. Graph is not zero-scaled. Source: IEA, and EIA. The IEA raw line is what they initially state each month. The IEA corrected line is calculated from the month-on-month production change quoted the following month.

As we start the new year with oil prices 25% higher than this time last year, what are the pundits, trade, journals, and so called experts saying about what to expect in 2006 and beyond for worldwide oil supply?  

By almost all accounts a lot of major projects should be coming on stream in 2006 (or started up in late 2005).  Those include Bonga, Thunder Horse, Erha, Adar Yale, White Rose, ACG Mega-structure, Sakhalin I and II, etc.  At least a couple of those projects, I have some personal knowledge of and fully expect them to produce as planned in 2006.  On the other hand, a number of these projects have been delayed for 6 months to years, and lots of oil that was expected to be on in Iraq and the GOM remains shut in due to war/insurgency/natural disaster.  What does all that mean for 2006 overall liquids production?  Could we actually have peaked in 2005?