Russian secondary peak approaches?

by **frankthetank** » Thu 17 Mar 2005, 17:11:47

http://mosnews.com/money/2005/03/16/oil ... cast.shtml

"The president of the Russian Union of Oil and Gas Producers said on Wednesday, March 16, that the countryâ€™s oil exports are in danger unless a program of geological exploration of new oil deposits is introduced..."

and
this is funny

"the government and public opinion stop thinking about the oil and gas industry as some â€œmagic wand that works and works and works and doesnâ€™t ask to eatâ€

by **cube** » Thu 17 Mar 2005, 19:42:04

That's a surprisingly honest statement coming from a CEO or president of an organization. However for anyone who has done their homework...Russia has reached PO back in the 1980's when it was the USSR.

by **maverickdoc** » Thu 17 Mar 2005, 19:44:30

they said they will stop shipping oil by 2010

by **Phil** » Thu 17 Mar 2005, 20:29:00

Apparently Russia was exporting an average of 6.4mbpd last year. That's a lot of oil to be disappearing from the market...

by **advancedatheist** » Thu 17 Mar 2005, 23:05:21

Wait! I thought Russia was sitting on an endless supply of abiotic oil discovered by scientists when Stalin was still running the country. How could the Russians be running out now?

by **k_semler** » Fri 18 Mar 2005, 02:19:09

Ahh, the glory of Communism shines its brilliant light once again! :lol:

by **2007** » Fri 18 Mar 2005, 06:48:56

If I was minister of agitation and propaganda and if I was so lucky somone had informed me of depletion of non-renewable resources - then I could see the spin value of exagerating the decline and thus prepare the customers for times to come.

by **linlithgowoil** » Fri 18 Mar 2005, 07:56:25

putin must know all about peak oil. russians and their media are often very straightforward about upcoming problems - they dont gloss over things as much as we in the west do.

russia might once again be a world superpower with all of its oil and natural gas - i wonder if they'll try to reacquire their old countries lost when the USSR split up?

by **2007** » Fri 18 Mar 2005, 08:12:16

I don't think it's the russians ambitions to redraw the maps. Historically, the West has been more in Russia than Russia in the West. My guess is they're for 'assertive independence' - after all, time is in their favour.

by **Ercole** » Fri 18 Mar 2005, 13:01:53

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('linlithgowoil', 'r')ussia might once again be a world superpower with all of its oil and natural gas.

by **Ender** » Sat 19 Mar 2005, 22:17:31

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', ' ')However for anyone who has done their homework...Russia has reached PO back in the 1980's when it was the USSR.

by **Russian_Cowboy** » Sun 20 Mar 2005, 13:27:18

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('linlithgowoil', 'p')utin must know all about peak oil. russians and their media are often very straightforward about upcoming problems - they dont gloss over things as much as we in the west do.
russia might once again be a world superpower with all of its oil and natural gas - i wonder if they'll try to reacquire their old countries lost when the USSR split up?

by **Russian_Cowboy** » Fri 03 Jun 2005, 22:08:04

Many folks here think that Russia has virtually inexhaustible oil reserves. This has nothing to do with the reality.

I fit a Hubbert curve to the USSR production data from 1961 to 1978 when the Soviet economy was very dynamic and the economic crisis of the 1980-s had not yet set in. This way I figured that the ultimate recoverable reserves of the USSR are equal to 235 Gba. This figure:

indicates that by the end of 1998 the (former) USSR produced 136 Gba thus leaving 99 Gba in the ground at that moment.

Using a very liberal estimate that Russia has accounted of about 87% of the USSR oil production, I figured that 99*0.87=86Gba of oil was left in Russia at the end of 1998. To this amount I added approximate estimates of the offshore oil never explored and produced until 1998: 6 Gba (0.8 bln. tonnes) of oil in the north Okhota Sea, 4 Gba in the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea, and about 18 Gba (~2.5 bln. tonnes) of Arctic offshore oil located in the Barentz and Kara seas. This makes 86+6+4+18=114 Gba at the end of 1998. Since then Russia produced 17 Gba of oil leaving 114-17=97 Gba waiting to be produced.

At the current rate of production (9.33 Mba/day as of May 2005) Russian oil will be completely depleted in 97/(365.25*0.00933)=28 years. Not to mention that the 24 Gba of the offshore oil in the North Okhota Sea and the Arctic will be EXTREMELY expensive to produce as these seas are covered with ice all the winter and spring and the rigs will have to be protected from drifting ice.

by **MicroHydro** » Fri 03 Jun 2005, 22:37:39

Thank you R_C.

One speculative point. In a couple of decades the arctic could be ice free in the summer. Hard to say if this would help with extraction since the rigs would presumably have to be there all year.

by **Russian_Cowboy** » Fri 03 Jun 2005, 22:57:05

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MicroHydro', 'T')hank you R_C.
One speculative point. In a couple of decades the arctic could be ice free in the summer. Hard to say if this would help with extraction since the rigs would presumably have to be there all year.

by **marek** » Sat 04 Jun 2005, 00:04:26

Russian_Cowboy,

Thanks for raising the topic of Russian supply. I did a paper on the FSU (not simply Russia but also Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and me and Jean Laherrere agree on URR (mine is 255 Gb while Jean's is 250 Gb). As of 2002, 149 Gb has been produced since 1863. That gives us 106 Gb remaining. My forecast shows a second peak in 2009-2010 (not at the midpoint). Jean also has suggested 2010 as the peak. In Lisbon, Ray Leonard (the former vice president of Yukos for exploration and the present executive of the Hungarian company MOL) said he expected output to decline after 2010.

by **Russian_Cowboy** » Sat 04 Jun 2005, 01:18:03

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('marek', 'R')ussian_Cowboy,
Thanks for raising the topic of Russian supply. I did a paper on the FSU (not simply Russia but also Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and me and Jean Laherrere agree on URR (mine is 255 Gb while Jean's is 250 Gb). As of 2002, 149 Gb has been produced since 1863. That gives us 106 Gb remaining.

by **marek** » Sat 04 Jun 2005, 04:15:31

Naturally, given the political situation the statistical fit of the Hubbert curve will be overly optimistic, and the actual production may start declining earlier.

by **rockdoc123** » Sat 04 Jun 2005, 10:34:16

Hey great post Russian cowboy! just wondering your view on the potential of Eastern Siberia....some say underexplored but not a lot of info available. Also my experience has been that although I believe most of the fields have been discovered by Soviet geologists (who by the way are some of the best to my mind) many of those fields have been abused by poor reservoir management practices....a product of the working environment in Soviet Russia I'm afraid. Is there any extra life that can be dragged out of those fields with remedial secondary recovery efforts? How long could that prolong the production curve?

by **Russian_Cowboy** » Sat 04 Jun 2005, 15:59:43

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', 'H')ey great post Russian cowboy! just wondering your view on the potential of Eastern Siberia....some say underexplored but not a lot of info available.

Russian secondary peak approaches?

Russians say they're running out of oil

How much oil is left in Russia

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