[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')arge oil deposit discovered in NW China

A massive oil deposit of 500 million tons has been discovered in an area near Lanzhou, capital of northwest China's Gansu Province, an expert said Thursday.

The belt along Lanzhou, Yongdeng and Minhe has up to 340 million tons of oil deposit, the Yuzhong-Jingning-Jingyuan belt 160 million tons, said Liu Huaqing, an engineer with the Northwest Branch of the Petro China Exploration & Development Research Institute.

[Jack]

(Chuckle)

The very fact that such a meagre discovery made the news at all tells us much.

BTW - click on my WWW page for the color-coded doomerosity scale!

[linlithgowoil]

what do you mean 6 weeks? what are you talking about? have you just divided worldwide consumption per day by the amount held in the reserve? if so, then you are a total idiot, and just as idiotic as people who say we have 40 years of reserves left.

this field will just add in to all the cumulative worldwide production and will likely produce oil for decades.

what are you saying something idiotic like 6 weeks for?

[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('linlithgowoil', 'w')hat do you mean 6 weeks? what are you talking about? have you just divided worldwide consumption per day by the amount held in the reserve? if so, then you are a total idiot, and just as idiotic as people who say we have 40 years of reserves left.

this field will just add in to all the cumulative worldwide production and will likely produce oil for decades.

what are you saying something idiotic like 6 weeks for?

[PWALPOCO]

Coyote ,

Dont worry matey , Ill join you in the "idiot" camp having basically made a similar comparison with the 500m barrel Brazillian find that was reported the other day. Essentially the maths showed it was equivalent to about a weeks world supply.

Linlithgowonoil, you are right that while "obviously" such discoveries wouldnt be utilised in such a way, Coyotes comparison of "how long would we get thru this" helps scale them in the big picture.

Lets face it , our Peak Oil problem is more to do with the rate we can get the stuff out of the ground. The world has seemingly been mostly fed by a few massive fields, holding hundreds of billions of barrels of oil. They, like other fields are going to get tired and less productive and output will fall by hundreds of thousands of barrels per day.

These new finds will help paper over the cracks. They may do the job for a year or two , and their contribution will help stave things off till they too decline. However , more and more declines will occur and these new finds can only cover so much. Even worse , these new finds will have a lot shorter lifespan than some of the fields they replace.

Like I said elsewhere , every bit of oil helps. 100kbpd production dissapears here and another 100kbpd is added there. Its frightning that what the media is reporting as big new finds will mostly help us stand still in overall output let alone help meet increasing world demand.

Paul

[ReserveGorwthRulz]

If Peak Oil occurred this past Thanksgiving, and China just found another 6 weeks worth, do we now revise the "official" Peak Oil peak to New Years Day 2006? Maybe Valentines Day,2006?

I know I was surprised when I went to the grocery store after Thanksgiving and they were still getting food deliveries from (gasp!) of all things trucks, but this extra 6 weeks would help explain why everything didn't crash by Dec 1st....civilization wise.

[Seadragon]

I hope you're not serious...peak oil doesn't mean an immediate crash.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

After having perused the forums to some extent, it would appear that some people do believe that 10 seconds after peak occurs, civilization zips straight down the rabbit hole. Some Peakers take this as quite a definitive moment, versus some more practical people who might be convinced the destruction of civilization won't be quite so quick.

[thor]

[quote="coyote"]
But golly, if true, that comes out to about 3.5 billion barrels... and if they can get all that oil out of the ground, and ramp up production pretty quickly, then this massive discovery could delay worldwide Peak by about...
[/quote]

SA had 262.7 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves at the end of 2003 (Simmons). So your 3.5 billion barrels of "massive" discovery is just about 1.3% of SA's reserves. Simmons says that we remain in a lot of trouble, even with these so-called "huge" discoveries. I now understand why.

[Karl]

Coyote,

Yours is a standard comparison that is used across the community to sometimes illustrate the size of reserves, especially in relation to our current demand. Its a useful means of understanding the size of reserve, the same comparisons have been made with ANWAR reserves against US comsumption.

Its unfortunately something I have noticed in my life about the ability of some north of the border in the UK to comprehend what are only 'turns of speech'.

Keep off the insults and chill out! Try some Burns he could 'think out of the box' successfully.

[Novus]

When the US peaked in 1970 the Prudhoe Bay oil field was just being discovered. It took 15 years to fully develope it and it was three times as large at 13 billion barrels. It hardly made a dent in the oil crisis that had developed by 1979.

This Chinese field in other words is nothing and will it Not delay peak oil by even one minute. Peak Oil occured back in October of 2004 when the world produced just under 84 million barrels a day. The world will never produce that much oil again. It is all downhill from here and no new oil discoveries are going to change that.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he very fact that such a meagre discovery made the news at all tells us much

[Falconoffury]

The effects of peak oil are being held back by the IEA and USA strategic petroleum reserve right now. Spring '06 is going to get interesting for a number of reasons.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

If PO occurred in late-2004, then why haven't most people noticed it yet? That means we're heading into the 5th quarter of terminal oil decline, yet the only thing which has happened is the commodity price spiked a bit...I thought the tractors would stop running, no food, the price sure wouldn't DROP like it has since August....

[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReserveGrowthRulz', 'I')f PO occurred in late-2004, then why haven't most people noticed it yet? That means we're heading into the 5th quarter of terminal oil decline, yet the only thing which has happened is the commodity price spiked a bit...I thought the tractors would stop running, no food, the price sure wouldn't DROP like it has since August....

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', 'W')hen the US peaked in 1970 the Prudhoe Bay oil field was just being discovered. It took 15 years to fully develope it and it was three times as large at 13 billion barrels. It hardly made a dent in the oil crisis that had developed by 1979.

This Chinese field in other words is nothing and will it Not delay peak oil by even one minute. Peak Oil occured back in October of 2004 when the world produced just under 84 million barrels a day. The world will never produce that much oil again. It is all downhill from here and no new oil discoveries are going to change that.

[Kylon]

The way peak oil seems to be playing out is instead of a massive rapid collapse, there are collapses first in the third world and the periphery of global civilization, and a steady degradation of the quality of life in the centers of wealth/global civilization.

This is exactly what you'd expect if you had leadership aware of peak oil in the centers of civilization, and had some capability of mitigating the effects.

They'd work hard to ensure their part of civilization was better protected from the effects of peak oil. This doesn't negate the possibility of collapse however. It does delay it significantly. How significantly is unknown.

Perhaps it will buy enough time for the possibility of transition and adaptation to new economic and environmental realities. This in turn may spur the development of things like ocean farming, potentially leading to the possibility of retaining the benefits of the oil age for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

[asg70]

Seems like we have enough of the final product to keep happy motoring and BAU humming. Nitpicking over the peak of conventional is only of academic interest.