Stories in topic "Geology/Exploration"

Comments on Scientific American's "Squeezing more oil from the ground"

This article, put together by Jean Laherrère and edited by Colin Campbell, is a critical review of the recent article by Leonardo Maugeri published by Scientific American.

A decade ago, Scientific American published the seminal article by these two luminaries of the Peak Oil awareness movement, that relaunched the debate on M. King Hubbert's finds, Scientific American appears now as a completely different publication. Now, however, scientific content doesn't seem to be a requisite for its articles. Among other eerie details, Leonardo Maugeri goes as far as citing "Common Wisdom" to present erroneous facts.

Sadad al-Husseini on Middle East OPEC oil fields



"In the Arabian Gulf we have serious problems of maturity in many of these fields" Sadad al Husseini, ASPO USA interview, Denver CO, 12 October 2009

Half a trillion barrels more than we thought? (Or, "The Tupi Field, the Pre-salt, and the Very Distant Future")



At the end of the first day of the ASPO conference in Denver, we were treated to a fantastic presentation on the oil potential of the sub-salt basins on the margins of the South Atlantic Ocean given by Dr Marcio Mello who presented the evidence for a half trillion barrels of reserves in this new frontier province. So has a new Saudi Arabia been found?

North Sea Petroleum Reserves



North Sea petroleum (oil+natural gas) production from 1970 to 2008 can be modeled to fit two Hubbert cycles. The first cycle represents surge production from the giant UK oil fields, Forties, Brent, Piper and Ninian. Actual cumulative production was 9937 million tonnes oil equivalent (mmtoe) 1970-2008 whilst the area beneath the two Hubbert curves is 9665 mmtoe - a difference of 2.7%.

To what extent the second Hubbert cycle will describe the decline in oil and gas production is highly pertinent but also uncertain. There are signs that the decline trajectory has already been influenced by a third cycle of giant field development with the Buzzard oil field and Ormen Lange gas field both coming on stream in 2007. The impact of this third cycle is shown below the fold.

Open Thread for "Peak Oil is 'A Waste of Energy'" NYTimes Article

Today the NYTimes ran an Op-ed by Michael Lynch once again pointing out the "fallacious thinking behind the concept of Peak Oil."

TheOilDrum staff is considering a rebuttal to this article, though if we go point by point to Mr. Lynch it will be a bit like Monty Python skit, "The Argument Clinic", given he didn't posit many facts. Below the fold are some brief points followed by an open thread for you to deposit your own.



Drilling through Rock

There are times when new technologies are proposed as being better ways of drilling for oil and natural gas. However, to understand how these are better (or more likely not) than existing technologies, you have to know how the industry commonly drills through rock. There are two basic ways of doing so, depending on how hard the rock is. The first is the one that made the Hughes family very rich (if you ever saw the film The Aviator, Howard Hughes extravaganzas were paid for because his father had invented an effective way of drilling oil wells). The other, somewhat slower, was developed the last time that we had an energy crisis, and uses artificial diamonds, in the main, to gouge into and scrape off thin layers of rock.

Before I describe the diamond bit, let me borrow a bit from a post I did four years ago, and describe the idea behind the Hughes bit, which for reasons that I will explain, is usually referred to as a tri-cone bit.


The three cones of a tri-cone bit.

I have put together a number of tech talks in the past. This is the first in a series of updates.

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

Update on US GOM: Methane Hydrates

This is a guest post by Jean Laherrère, the second of a series on the current knowledge of the deepwater Oil and Gas reserve at the Gulf of Mexico. In this second installment Jean analyses the Methane Hydrate resource of the region, in face of recent claims of great drilling results in the region.

The first article of the series, on the conventional Oil and Gas reserve, can be found here. Thanks to ace's diligence an error was identified and corrected, resulting in an update to the graph on Commulative Oil and Gas Discovery over 400 meters deep.

Update on US GOM from MMS, EIA and Scout Data

This is a guest post by Jean Laherrère on the current knowledge of the deepwater Oil and Gas reserve at the Gulf of Mexico. In this first installment of the series Jean looks at data recently made public by the MMS and compares it to previously published information from the EIA and scout companies.

In a coming installment Jean will discuss the recent Methane Hydrates findings announced in the region.

Update: The graph on Commulative Discovery for over 400 meters deep was corrected; originally showing the oil curve reaching close to 12 Gb, the correct figure is around 7 Gb. Thanks to ace for his diligent scrutiny.

Blogger Conference Call with Robert Ryan, VP of Global Exploration, Chevron

This post is a summary of a conference call for bloggers hosted by the American Petroleum Institute (API) on Friday, May 15th, 2009, from 12 to 1 pm. The conference call was set up as a Q & A session where questions from numerous bloggers were fielded by Robert Ryan, the Vice President of Global Exploration at Chevron. Other participants that fielded some questions were Justin Higgs, News Media Advisor (Chevron), Mark Kibbe, Federal Relations Director (API), and John Felmy, Chief Economist (API). The following is an abridged version of the transcript, focusing on some of the more interesting questions and answers. A complete transcript of the conference call and recording of the call can be found here.