Re: [asa] Peak Oil temporarily posponed?

O what a delicious article; it made my month. Here the New York Times Business section is caught with its pants down. (Of course, in today’s culture that may not be all that bad, according to many.)

Here is the title of the article: “Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells”. When would you think these innovations were implemented?

Here is the first paragraph: “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.” What would you think the daily putout of this field was in the year 2000?

About halfway through the article is this quote: “At Bakersfield, for example, Chevron is using steam-flooding technology and computerized three-dimensional models to boost the output of the field’s heavy oil reserves. Even after a century of production, engineers say there is plenty of oil left to be pumped from Kern River. “We’re still finding new opportunities here,” said Steve Garrett, a geophysicist with Chevron. “It’s not over until you abandon the last well, and even then it’s not over.”

and at the end: “Back in California, the Kern River field itself seems little changed from what it must have looked like 100 years ago. The same dusty hills are now littered with a forest of wells, with gleaming pipes running along dusty roads. Seismic technology and satellites are now used to monitor operations while sensors inside the wells record slight changes in temperature or pressure. Each year, the company drills some 850 new wells there. Amazingly, there are very few workers in the field. Engineers in air-conditioned control rooms can get an accurate picture of the field’s underground reservoir and pinpoint with accuracy the areas they want to explore. None of that technology was available just a decade ago. “Yes, there are finite resources in the ground, but you never get to that point,” Jeff Hatlen, an engineer with Chevron, said on a recent tour of the field. In 1978, when he started his career here, operators believed the field would be abandoned wit!
 hin 15 years. “That’s why peak oil is a moving target,” Mr. Hatlen said. “Oil is always a function of price and technology.”

So reading this article I think most people would get the impression that the Kern River field was recently able to increase production significantly using new technologies and is on the way to increasing it even more. Is this the case? Look in the article itself and click on the graphic on the left entitled: Reports of Oil’s Demise are Greatly Exaggerated. [Are they? Is this what the diagram really shows?]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/business/05oil1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Look at the production of the Kern River field on the left side of the graphic. When did this new technology of steam injection start. Well, 1964--43 years ago! They then reached peak production around 1985 with 140,000 barrels a day and continued for about another 13 years at a rate near 130,000 barrels per day until about 1998 when production started to drop and it now has decreased to 85,000 barrels a day. Does this look like a good situation to you?

Is this what you thought the author was trying to tell you in the article?

Everybody I know who thinks we are nearing peak oil does NOT think we will run out. We all agree that new fields will be found in the future. We all agree that new technologies will be employed that will increase the amount of oil extracted from a field. We all agree that alternative fuels will met some energy needs. But we don’t think that will be enough to avoid running into significant problems with decreasing petroleum supplies. There is simply no doubt that despite all of the new technologies the lower 48 states of the US now produces less than 50% of the crude it did in 1970, regardless of steam injection and other "new" techniques. Moreover, the majority of oil producing countries in the world have experienced similar types of declines in conventional crude production, and there is virtually no dispute that this will eventually happen in all producing countries. The only question is how soon will it be that world peak production will happen. We haven’t incre!
 ased production in the last two years and some are arguing that we have now hit peak oil. Who knows? It is not unreasonable that his will occur within the next 5 years

We found most large oil fields in the 1930’s and 40’s. We found a few more when went to look in less desireable places like deepwater and artic reagions. We really don’t have many more places to look and it is unlikely that we would have missed the really big fields. When Jeff Hatlen claims, “Yes, there are finite resources in the ground, but you never get to that point,” I don’t agree with that idea.

Soon (within the next 20 years I believe) we will be unable to extract the amounts that we did the year before (the definition of Peak Oil). What will happen then--you can read the complete spectrum of opinions: from complete anarchy to increased economic growth if you look hard enough.

One real question you have to ask yourself is: Why did Jad Mouawad write this article the way he did?

Al K

(Some good ideas lifted from the OilDrum.)

It is impossible to reason a man out of something he has not been reasoned into. When people have acquired their beliefs on an emotional level they cannot be persuaded out of them on a rational level, no matter how strong the proof or the logic behind it. People will hold onto their emotional beliefs and twist the facts to meet their version of reality.
 - Sidney J. Harris

>>> Dave Wallace <wdwllace@sympatico.ca> 03/05/07 7:08 AM >>>

<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 14:55:08 2007