RE: Bye-Bye to Cheap Oil?

I just attended a reservoir engineering forum. Various companies were
presenting what they were doing with reservoir engineering. After the first
night, I called my wife and said that the conference was good. When I got
home, she asked how it was, and I said, "Depressing". What was presented in
the session was scary enough, but what was being said in the halls between
sessions was so pessimistic as to make one wish to go buy land and become a
wacko survivalist. (I may do it--the couple of cold fusion papers recently
are the only thing that makes me hope that we are not in dire straights.

Shell's people noted that the present world fields produce 80 million
barrels per day. In 2020 they will only produce 40 million, because of the
normal decline of an oil field. But demand will be 120 million barrels per
day. That means, that we in the oil industry must put on line as much
production as we have today. It took 100 years for the world to climb to 80
million barrels per day and now we must find another 80 million in the next
16 years.

The really scary part of the conference was what I heard in the halls about
Saudi Arabia from those who work there. I will save that for a news and
views I will write this weekend and submit to PSCF. If they reject it, then
I will post it.
Received on Fri Mar 26 16:45:04 2004