Oil reserves and peak oil

..Kuwait’s oil reserves may be one big number, or another smaller number. But the point to take away from this article is that a reduction in 5% of world oil reserves, even if it is only a bookkeeping entry, dramatically changes the planning assumptions for world energy use into the medium and long terms.

A 5% reduction in world reserves is the equivalent of the global economy losing almost 20 months worth of its eventual total cumulative worldwide oil production and consumption. This is based on the current world oil use of about 84 million barrels per day. As I said in my previous article, “From the standpoint of the world reaching the absolute Peak Oil point, we now live in August 2007, not January 2006.” Welcome to the future.

..This method of modeling for ultimate recoverable reserves is of little use in regions where oil development and production is immature. But it seems to work well in areas that have long histories and good statistics on oil production. It works just great for showing U.S. oil production numbers over the past few decades. And it appears that the numbers in most oil-producing nations of the Middle East are starting to fit the Hubbert logistic curve as well. As I noted in my previous article, Hubbert linearization gives Kuwait a volume of oil reserves in the range of 40-48 billion barrels, far below the figures offered by the director of the KOC.

Energy Bulletin