An Energy Tsunami Ahead

[adios]

An Energy Tsunami Ahead

Admittedly this guy has a vested interest in increased oil production but he gives some statistics that are worth considering whether or not they have merit. A synopsys of the statistics in the presentation.

Statistics below are from Simmons' speeches.

50% of the world's oil production comes from only 120 fields that were discovered 40+ yrs ago. Half are more than 40 yrs old, 95% are more than 25 yrs old.

Saudi Arabia has 5 key fields producing 90% of their output, and have so for 40 yrs.

Pressurized oil fields all have a "rate sensitivity" to how they are drained, so that the higher the production, the faster high reservoir pressures end. Once pressures fall to a "bubble point", gas rises to the surface of the pool and pressures begin to drop much faster. Thus, many experts believe that if the Saudi's pump faster by adding a lot more holes in these few high producing fields, the peak production point will be reached faster and the degradation rate after peak production will become faster.

A geologist I read said the world has been entirely "mapped" seismically, and the liklihood of any significant numbers of "elephant" finds is highly unlikely: thus these types of finds may soon be called dinasaurs rather than elephants.

The date of peak discovery in the world was 1965. The typical time from date of peak discovery of a single field to peak production is tyically 40 yrs.

The Saudi's have some severe challenges to maintain production, let alone increase production: the age of their fields, the rising "water cuts" [The ratio of water produced compared to the volume of total liquids produced], and the tight and complex geologic formations. The north Ghawar water cuts have risen from 0.1% to ~3.0% over the life of the reservoir, so far, and the slope is increasing.

Technology was supposed to make oil easy to find and cheap to produce: instead, technology exaggerated proven reserves and used up most of the high quality light crude oil. The track record of technology being able to bail us out from the present course towards peak oil production is not good.

There are significant "choke points" of capacity to produce oil: Well head, Processing, Pipeline, Tanker, Refining, Drill rig capacities as well as finding new projects to boost the supply inventory of viable large drilling opporunities, and also the people to execute those projects. Spare high quality offshore and deep depth (high horsepower) land rigs can be counted on 5-7 hands. The global drilling fleet is old, the capacity to add drilling components is sparse, and the capacity to build offshore platforms is spare with the cost to build an offshore rig being twice that of the 1996-2001 period. The rig shortage squeeze in the near future will be acute. Also, the oil and gas industry has a graying work force with a "lost generation" gap of new hires since the late 70's, and pre-1982 hires will be retiring in the next 10 yrs.

There are frontiers out there (Russia, Artic, Antartic, offshore US/Canada and Mexico, and Alaska North Slope), but they all take time and will merely offset post Peak-production declines.

"Once Saudi oil productino passes peak, so has the world."

We are not running out of oil but we are running out of *cheap* oil just as oil demand appears to be surmounting supply in the 4th quarter of this yr as we will produce 83-84 M bpd and are likely to need 86-87 M bpd. We will not run short of oil then, but prices will cause the elasticity of demand to meet supply.

[Il_Mostro]

Just a quick note, don't have time to read it now.
Simmons has been talking about peak oil for quite a while, and I would say he is very reliable. His book about SA, due in june I belive, will be very interesting.

[superleeds]

If your interested in this topic I can reccomend

The End of Oil

[Il_Mostro]

I have read these things before, all in all he is likely correct in all he is saying. Noteworthy is that he is on the optimistic side.

[ QUOTE ]

Admittedly this guy has a vested interest in increased oil production but he gives some statistics that are worth considering whether or not they have merit.

[/ QUOTE ]
The stats are probably correct, easily checked facts tend to be.

[natedogg]

The more I read about peak oil and the future of energy, the less I am concerned about a disaster.

Everything they say about oil supplies etc is probably right.

Their extrapolations of the ramifications are, I believe, borderline nonsense, especially the really extreme survivalist peak-oil types like the guy who wrote:

The Long Emergency

This is a hilarious read but has nothing to do with reality.
natedogg

[Il_Mostro]

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The more I read about peak oil and the future of energy, the less I am concerned about a disaster.


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Define disaster. Society coming apart in a matter of years? No, not likely. But in a 100 years? Unless we abandon the current growth-based view I'm certain that will happen. It has happened many times before in history.

The simple fact is that there still is nothing, nothing, nothing that can even begin to make up for the loss of fossil fuels and we will very likely have to make do with a lot less energy per person in the future, with all that will mean.

[ QUOTE ]
Everything they say about oil supplies etc is probably right.

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Most of it, anyway, a lot is not known only estimated / guessed.

[wacki]

In the USA oil production peaked in 1970 - and in almost every year since then, production has been less than the year preceding it.

Should this happen on a world-wide scale, then the only way to avert shoratges will be to conserve, because there will be no option to increase supply.

Some geologists put the time of 'peak' within about 2-3 years. The most optimistic estimates put it about 20-25 years in the future.

See www.peakoil.net for more info.

From what I've seen, the info on that site tends to be pretty reliable and numerous articles from that site have been referenced by Nobel Laureates.

[wacki]

[Il_Mostro]

Individual peak years for countries:

energybulletin.net/

[natedogg]

[ QUOTE ]
The simple fact is that there still is nothing, nothing, nothing that can even begin to make up for the loss of fossil fuels and we will very likely have to make do with a lot less energy per person in the future, with all that will mean.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the part I don't believe is correct.

natedogg