Stories tagged with "reserves growth"

The 2008 IEA WEO - Oil Reserves and Resources

Posted by Phil Hart on November 20, 2008 - 10:28am in The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: iea, oil reserves, opec reserves, original, reserves growth, undiscovered resources, weo 2008 [list all tags]

True to their word, the 2008 World Energy Outlook represents a significant development by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in the philosophy and methodology of their oil supply forecasts. The report attempts a bottom-up model of the world's oil production potential and even revises down estimates previously taken at face value from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The tone of the report has also changed dramatically, with an urgent call for investment in additional oil projects to avoid production shortfalls by 2015.

Despite those significant changes, the report still relies on inflated estimates of reserves from OPEC countries, overplays the contribution of reserves growth due to technology and predicts the reversal of a decades long trend of declining oil discoveries. These are the real factors that will send oil production into decline, but at least now we have some numbers we can discuss and analyze instead of a decade of blind faith in oil market economics.


There's more… (4309 words) | Comments (71) | | Permalink | Without comments

Solving the "Enigma" of Reserve Growth

Posted by Khebab on July 16, 2008 - 9:00am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: reserves growth [list all tags]

This is a guest post from WebHubbleTelescope.
As a good rule of thumb, when you have a promising model describing some physical process, you might as well put it through its paces. Not only do you shake out some stubborn corner cases, but you often find something new and revealing. We did that in the last post, The Derivation of "Logistic-shaped" Discovery, grinding out the derivation of the classic Logistic/Sigmoid-shaped Hubbert curve based on the generalized Dispersive Discovery model. With this post, I use the same discovery model to derive the upward climb of the cumulative reserve growth curve which we empirically observe on many oil reservoirs and oil-bearing regions.

Update: WebHubbleTelescope has posted an updated version of this post here.

There's more… (2321 words) | Comments (57) | | Permalink | Without comments

Shedding Light on the Question of Reserves Growth

Posted by Phil Hart on December 7, 2007 - 10:30am in The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Geology/Exploration
Tags: reserves, reserves growth [list all tags]

USGS World Petroleum Assessment

In 2000, the United States Geological Survey issued its World Petroleum Assessment, covering the thirty year period 1995-2025 (Table 1). The resource estimates from this study are widely quoted to support the argument that oil production can continue to expand. (Comments now open!)

There's more… (1181 words) | Comments (109) | | Permalink | Without comments

The Shape of Oil to Come

Posted by Rembrandt on October 12, 2007 - 9:00am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: original, peak, plateau, reserves growth, supply [list all tags]

This article is about the way in which oil production is going evolve. Will there be a sharp peak, or a long lasting plateau?

Our future is highly dependent on the way in which worldwide crude oil production is going to decline. If it goes rapidly, declining with a few percent each year or more, than it will be very difficult to complete the energy transition without severe economical consequences. If production stabilizes and plateaus for a decade or longer, after which the period of long decline begins, it would provide much greater means to sustain the present economy. Stability is needed to scale up alternative sources of energy sufficiently to replace crude oil during a transition period of decades.

There's more… (2282 words) | Comments (139) | | Permalink | Without comments

The Shock Model (Part II)

Posted by Khebab on April 17, 2007 - 8:07am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: reserves growth, shock model [list all tags]

This post is the second part of a review of the Shock Model that was introduced in part I. The shock model was developed by WebHubbleTelecsope and aims at modeling oil production based on the backdated oil discovery data. In the first part, we proposed to apply a bootstrap filter in order to estimate the shock function that was previously manually set by the user. We also observed that the predictive ability was limited because of a too conservative projection of future extraction rate values.

In this second part, I propose a modification of the extraction rate function in order to improve the predictive ability of the model. This modification is based on the observation that the extraction rate function is linearly dependent to the ratio of the cumulative production to the cumulative shifted discovery. The new formulation is similar to the logistic differential equation at the difference that the Ultimate Recoverable Resource (URR) is replaced by the cumulative shifted discovery.

I look also at the modelisation of reserve growth which is an important aspect of modern oil production that is often overlooked in the peak oil community. 

The code in R language is provided at the end of this post.

Printer friendly version in pdf.

There's more… (1857 words) | Comments (101) | | Permalink | Without comments

A Primer on Reserve Growth - part 2 of 3

Posted by Rembrandt on December 26, 2006 - 10:05am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: iea, jean laherrère, peak oil, reserves growth, usgs [list all tags]

This post is the second part in a three piece series about the phenomenon of reserve growth in already found oil fields. Insight in future reserve growth, which is often attributed to advancement in technology, is crucial in determining the peak of conventional oil production. For those not familiar with reserve growth it would be best to read part 1 first:

1. General introduction to reserve growth, what can we learn from the worldwide recovery factor of conventional oil fields?

In this second part various scientific studies about reserve growth in the United States, the North Sea and Russia are analysed. The third part will look at the reliability of the estimate from the United States Geological Survey in their World Petroleum Assessment 2000 with respect to future reserve growth.

There's more… (3935 words) | Comments (42) | | Permalink | Without comments

A Primer on Reserve Growth - part 1 of 3

Posted by Rembrandt on December 23, 2006 - 6:05am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: iea, jean laherrère, peak oil, reserves growth, usgs [list all tags]

The difference in vision between so called "optimists" and pessimists" with respect to the peak in world oil production is often caused by a view of future technological development in the oil industry. This development influences both conventional and unconventional oil production. Only a part of the oil in an oil field can be produced. It is claimed by oil companies and various institutes that technological advancement will increase the recoverable amount, thereby postponing the peak in conventional oil for several decades. In essence this means that the amount of recoverable reserve increases over time due to changes in technology, economy, insights. But also expected recoverable reserves increase over time due to past underestimates. This is why the term is called "reserve growth".
There's more… (3530 words) | Comments (60) | | Permalink | Without comments

Reserves Growth and Production Flows

Posted by Dave Cohen on August 30, 2006 - 3:46pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: cges, production flows, reserves growth [list all tags]

[editor's note, by Dave Cohen] HO is out of town on family business so I took this subject up in his absence.

Dr. Leo P. Drollas, Deputy Director and Chief Economist for the Centre for Global Energy Studies has issued a response to Heading Out's Depletion estimates and the CGES. I feel that Drollas' comments deserve a response.

The argument concerns what is termed "reserves growth" which Drollas defines as

Growing knowledge tends to result in more oil reserves through oilfield extensions and revisions of reserves -- what is commonly known in the industry as `reserves growth' -- as well as through discoveries of new oilfields....

If there are no gross additions to reserves the depletion rate is equal to the world's rate of oil production as a percentage of global proven reserves (2.38% in 2005). However, gross additions have not been zero; indeed, since 1954 they have exceeded the world's production of oil.

The entire comment is below the fold.
There's more… (1969 words) | Comments (192) | | Permalink | Without comments