Fw: [asa] Peak Oil temporarily posponed?

I forwarded the post on peak oil to Glenn Morton. Here's his response.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net>
To: "'George Murphy'" <gmurphy@raex.com>
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 8:08 AM
Subject: RE: [asa] Peak Oil temporarily posponed?

Yeah, I am not on the list, but Dave sent me this. You may post this to the
ASA, it is a modified version of what I sent to Dave.

One can do steam injection for heavy oil fields. The reason that Kern River
and fields like Midway Sunset are capable of being increased is that the
viscosity of the oil is very high. Thus, it didn't flow. When they started
steam flooding, it raises the temperature of the oil and the viscosity falls
making the oil flow. But, you can only do this on heavy oil fields. It
really doesn't help the lighter crudes, which flow quite nicely anyway. Most
fields follow the pattern seen in the North Sea. If technology is going to
solve our problem, why didn't it work in the North Sea? Every field I
looked at showed that technology there was only able to maintain production
at the 5% level compared to peak production.

Thus, I would say that heavy oil fields are the exception, not the rule.

I would also note that the Saudis have announced that they are in decline

>>>>
http://www.raisethehammer.org/blog.asp?id=220 :
Peak Oil for Saudi Arabia?
(Category: Energy)
Posted 2006/04/29 | By: Ryan McGreal
At yesterday's Peak Oil presentation to Hamilton City Council, Richard
Gilbert mentioned a little-reported event that may mark the day that the
earth tipped past its oil production peak.

Amazingly, a search of news reports turned up virtually nothing. I
eventually tracked down the original report from Platts Oilgram News: Saudi
Aramco announced on April 10, 2006 that Saudi Arabia's mature oilfields "are
expected to decline at a gross average rate of 8 percent a year without
additional maintenance and drilling."

The Aramco spokesperson explained that the company is attempting to offset
those declines with "remedial activities" including drilling new wells in
existing fields and opening up new fields. But get this: the spokesperson
went on, "This maintain potential drilling in mature fields combined with a
multitude of remedial actions and the development of new fields, with long
plateau lives, lowers the composite decline rate of producing fields to
around 2 percent."

The last time I checked, a two percent decline is still a decline. If this
is correct, then Saudi Arabia may be past its peak in oil production. Saudi
Arabia is responsible for approximately one eighth of the world's oil; as
Saudi Arabia goes, so goes the world.<<<<

The second largest producing field of 2005 has now dropped to the 3rd
largest producing field. In 2005 this field produced about 3% of the world's
oil, it dropped 15% in output in a year--much faster than Pemex had
expected.
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/02/09/10102928.html

Burgan, the 3rd largest field dropped 200,000 bbl/day from Nov 2005 to
today. And DaQing, the 4th largest field, 2 years ago produced more than 1
million per day, it is now below 900,000 bbl/day. These four fields used to
produce 10% of the world's oil. They are all in decline and in an industry
where a 1% shortfall can cause major price fluctuations, the decline of
these fields will have big impact.

But I see I didn't answer your question about this view being held by
retired geologists and a few congressman. I am not retired--yet. And I can
tell you that more and more of the explorationists in the industry know that
there is a problem, even if the bosses are not talking about it. When I
first became aware of the problem back in the late 1990s, few of my
colleagues shared my view. Today, most do.

glenn
They're Here: The Pathway Papers
Foundation, Fall, and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/dmd.htm

> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Murphy [mailto:gmurphy@raex.com]
> Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 6:48 AM
> To: Glenn Morton
> Subject: Fw: [asa] Peak Oil temporarily posponed?
>
>
> Glenn -
>
> I don't know how carefully you watch the asa list day to day
> but wondered
> what you thought of this news item - & in the 1st sentence of the 2d
> paragraph.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dave Wallace" <wdwllace@sympatico.ca>
> To: "asa" <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 7:08 AM
> Subject: [asa] Peak Oil temporarily posponed?
>
>
>
> <quote>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/business/05oil1.html?_r=1&th
&emc=th&oref=slogin

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - The Kern River oil field, discovered in 1899, was
revived when Chevron engineers here started injecting high-pressured steam
to pump out more oil. The field, whose production had slumped to 10,000
barrels a day in the 1960s, now has a daily output of 85,000 barrels.

There is still a minority view, held largely by a small band of retired
petroleum geologists and some members of Congress, that oil production has
peaked, but the theory has been fading. Equally contentious for the oil
companies is the growing voice of environmentalists, who do not think that
pumping and consuming an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuel is in any way
desirable. </quote>

I expect the postponement of peak oil even if true is only temporary.

Dave W

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Received on Mon Mar 5 09:25:55 2007