Oil 1 Peak Oil 21
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Oil Reserves HighPeak theorists are way off – reserves are experiencing substantial net increases in recoverable oil. Bob Williams, executive director, Oil & Gas Journal, “Debate over peak-oil issue boiling over, with major implications for industry, society,” 7/14/03, pg. 18 Reserves growth The issue of reserves growth in general is controversial, as OGJ found out with its last Worldwide Report, when it reported a 181 billion bbl net increase in global oil reserves (OGJ, Dec. 23, 2002, p. 62). It was the biggest jump in reserves estimates since the OPEC-inspired increases of the 1980s. Some readers objected to the inclusion of Canada's oil sands reserves figures in the totals; that step alone boosted Canada's total by 175 billion bbl, a 3,600% increase in a year and a No. 2 slot on the world's list of largest reserve holders. Conversely, a surprising drop in Mexican reserves in that same report -- by 53%, or 14 billion bbl, to 28 billion bbl -- stemmed from that country's use of SEC definitions. On this score as well, there is little common ground for agreement. Ahlbrandt claimed that technological innovations in the oil and gas industry "are manifested in increased success rates -- in spite of less drilling -- and the enormous contribution from reserve growth. "We have documented detailed reserve growth in the world and have published detailed reserve growth studies in the West Siberian basin, the Volga-Urals, Middle East, and, most recently, presented reserve growth studies for the North Sea , , , The North Sea example demonstrates the phenomena in a significant, technologically advanced province , , ," That view resonates in the picture the USGS painted of potential world petroleum resources in 2000 (Table 2). That assessment pegged the amount of future technically recoverable oil outside the US at 2.12 trillion bbl and an ultimate mean global URR of 3 trillion bbl. That compares with some peak-oil advocates' estimates of the entire global conventional oil endowment, including cumulative production to date, at 2 trillion bbl -- of which half has been produced. Oil Reserve Numbers Wrong There’s no true way of knowing how much oil we have – it’s an inexact science. Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère, phD in geology at U of Oxford and exploration geologist for Texaco, Scientific American, “The End of Cheap Oil,” 3/98, http://dieoff.org/page140.htm Getting good estimates of reserves is much harder, however. Almost all the publicly available statistics are taken from surveys conducted by the Oil and Gas Journal and World Oil. Each year these two trade journals query oil firms and governments around the world. They then publish whatever production and reserve numbers they receive but are not able to verify them. The results, which are often accepted uncritically, contain systematic errors. For one, many of the reported figures are unrealistic. Estimating reserves is an inexact science to begin with, so petroleum engineers assign a probability to their assessments. For example, if, as geologists estimate, there is a 90 percent chance that the Oseberg field in Norway contains 700 million barrels of recoverable oil but only a 10 percent chance that it will yield 2,500 million more barrels, then the lower figure should be cited as the so-called P90 estimate (P90 for "probability 90 percent") and the higher as the P10 reserves. Different oil-reserve definitions for different countries makes oil estimation impossible. Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère, phD in geology at U of Oxford and exploration geologist for Texaco, Scientific American, “The End of Cheap Oil,” 3/98, http://dieoff.org/page140.htm Another source of systematic error in the commonly accepted statistics is that the definition of reserves varies widely from region to region. In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission allows companies to call reserves "proved" only if the oil lies near a producing well and there is "reasonable certainty" that it can be recovered profitably at current oil prices, using existing technology. So a proved reserve estimate in the U.S. is roughly equal to a P90 estimate. Regulators in most other countries do not enforce particular oil-reserve definitions. For many years, the former Soviet countries have routinely released wildly optimistic figures—essentially P10 reserves. Yet analysts have often misinterpreted these as estimates of "proved" reserves. World Oil reckoned reserves in the former Soviet Union amounted to 190 Gbo in 1996, whereas the Oil and Gas Journal put the number at 57 Gbo. This large discrepancy shows just how elastic these numbers can be. Reserve Growth/Tech SolvesNew recovery technologies and oil reserve growth solves the oil peak. Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine, Reason, “Peak Oil Panic,” 5/06, http://www.reason.com/news/show/36645.html Peak oilers discount these rosy scenarios, insisting the relevant fact is that new oil discoveries have been falling during the last couple of decades. But the petroleum optimists, such as the analysts at the USGS, say there is more to it than that. They point out that reserve growth and new discoveries have been outpacing oil consumption. (Reserve growth is the increase in production in already discovered and developed fields.) From 1995 and 2003 the world consumed 236 billion barrels of oil. It also saw reserve growth of 175 billion barrels, combined with 138 billion barrels from new discoveries, added a total of 313 billion barrels to the world’s proven oil reserves. In the U.S., oil field reserves typically turn out to be four to nine times as high as the original estimates. The increase in production is a result of improved recovery technologies, further discoveries in the field, and improved field management. Consider the Kern River field in California, which was discovered in 1899. In 1942 it was estimated that only 54 million barrels remained to be produced there. During the next 44 years the field produced 736 million barrels and had another 970 million barrels remaining. For geological reasons, petroleum engineers cannot pump every drop of oil out of a reservoir. But by 2004 technological advances enabled them to recover 35 percent of a conventional reservoir’s oil, up from an average of 22 percent in 1980. If this recovery factor can be increased by another five percentage points, that would boost worldwide recoverable reserves by more than all of Saudi Arabia’s current proven reserves. Economides points out that in 1976 the U.S. was estimated to have 23 billion barrels of reserves remaining. In 2005 it still had 23 billion barrels of oil reserves, even though American oil fields produced almost 40 billion barrels of oil between 1976 and 2005. Tech Solves Tech solves peak oil – recovery rates will continue to grow. Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère, phD in geology at U of Oxford and exploration geologist for Texaco, Scientific American, “The End of Cheap Oil,” 3/98, p. 78 http://dieoff.org/page140.htm A second common rejoinder is that new technologies have steadily increased the fraction of oil that can be recovered from fields in a basin—the so-called recovery factor. In the 1960s oil companies assumed as a rule of thumb that only 30 percent of the oil in a field was typically recoverable; now they bank on an average of 40 or 50 percent. That progress will continue and will extend global reserves for many years to come, the argument runs. Future tech advances are inevitable and will curb demand for oil. Vaclav Smil, Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Peak Oil Forum, “Peak Oil: A Catastrophist Cult and Complex Realities,” Jan-Feb 06, http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~vsmil/pdf_pubs/WorldWatch.pdf Even if the world’s ultimately recoverable oil resources were known with perfection, the global oil production curve could not be determined without knowing future oil demand. We obviously have no such understanding because that demand will be shaped, as in the past, by unpredictable technical advances (who would have predicted in 1930 the new huge market for kerosene that was created by commercial jets by 1960, or in 1970 that the performance of an average U.S. car would double by 1985?) and by shifting prices. As Morris Adelman, who spent most of his career as a mineral economist at MIT, put it:“finite resources is an empty slogan; only marginal cost matters.” Tech SolvesPeak oil theorists don’t account for tech enhancing oil production. Michael C. Lynch, Strategic Energy & Economic Research, Inc., Center for International Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MINERALS & ENERGY VOL 18 NO 1, “The New Pessimism about Petroleum Resources,” 2003, http://www.precaution.org/lib/05/lynch_debunking_hubbert.20030615.pdf. The various problems have a clear impact on the results of the forecasts generated by these modelers, particularly Campbell and Laherrere. (The former has been prolific in publishing production forecasts for regions and countries.) In a classic instance, Campbell (1991) projected UK production to decline at a rate of 10% per year, the same as the Forties field (Figure 6). This implies that there would be no additional supplies from reserve growth, new large discoveries, or small and medium fields. Yet as Figure 6 shows, this was not the case – despite a lack of large discoveries. Indeed, as much as 400 tb/d of 1995 production was from small fields that were discovered before 1980, but not put on production until subsea technology made them recoverable – a clear example of technology enhancing supply (Adelman and Lynch 1997) Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 9.54 Mb. Share with your friends:
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