There are some interesting items in the April newsletter of THE ASSOCIATION
FOR THE STUDY OF PEAK OIL &
THE OIL DEPLETION ANALYSIS CENTRE
They have collected the estimates of ultimate oil recovery made by various
experts over the past 60 years. From 1942 until 1960, the estimates rose
over time and this is probably as it should be because we were still early
in the age of oil and new information was being developed. But an
interesting thing happened to the estimates after 1959. The vast majority of
them say that the earth had originally 1.8 trillion barrels of recoverable
oil +/- 100 billion (The average of all estimates is 1.93 trillion). Only 22
out of the 75 estimates say we had more than 2 trillion barrels. Since 1985
only 5 out of 25 say we had more than 2 trillion barrels. What does this
mean for the world? We have currently pumped about 1 trillion barrels of oil
out of the ground--half of what the majority of experts over the past 40
years say we have. When one looks at a geologic basin and watches the
production, the production will begin to decline when one has pumped half of
the oil out of the ground.
The second thing which is fascinating is the chart they show of the
discovery deficit. This curve merely consists of the yearly production
minus the yearly discovery rate. In other words it is the record of whether
more barrels are going into the bank or are coming out of it. Sadly, since
1981 not a single year has seen more oil found than we withdrew from the
earth. We are in major time deficit burning of oil (this is the equivalent
of deficit spending except that unlike the government, we can't print more
barrels). In 2001, we produced about 27 billion barrels but only discovered
8 billion spread among 300 discoveries.
And this brings us to the 2000 USGS estimate of the world's oil supply.
They said that there were 3.5 trillion barrels of oil originally on earth.
This estimate is the 2nd highest estimate in the entire historical record of
estimates. Statistically, it is an outlier. But it is already falsified. To
reach the goal of the very optimistic USGS report, one needs to find 25
billion barrels per year. But over the past 11 years we have averaged just
under 10 billion (9.8 by my figures). Even more disconcerting is the drop in
wildcat wells. A wildcat well is the true exploration well which looks for
brand new reserves. In 1980 we drilled 11,000 wildcat wells around the
world. For each of the past 5 years we have only drilled 2000. One reason
for the decrease is that the geophysics is better.What is happening is that
we are avoiding drilling a lot of the stupid things we used to ignorantly
drill because seismic data was so bad. Today we see better and what we see
is much smaller reservoir sizes. Thus we drill fewer wells because we have
fewer but more likely to be successfu, targets.
There is also an article in Petroleum Review which discusses the remaining
reserves from Russia (former Soviet Union. The production data from Russia
indicates that it has 185 billion barrel ultimate recovery. They have pumped
to date 140 billion. If this analysis is correct, the Russians who are
increasing production past 7 million barrels per day right now, will be
unable to sustain it past 2005
see http://www.oilcrisis.com/laherrere/PetRev200204.pdf
And the UK North Sea, after having about 4 good months after some new fields
came on production, is not back to declining steeply.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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