[kwftide]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nero', ' ')It's pretty alarming to me that the official position of the department of energy is that the world is going to end sometime around 2037 give or take 20 years.

[MacG]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kwftide', 'T')heir predicted peak is 2037 at 146 mbbls/day. We are currently at around 84 mbbls/day. I find it hard to believe production can expand to that level before the peak. That just doesn't seem possible to me.

[kwftide]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MacG', 'W')ell, you seem to be in good company of the refiners also. If they had believed in 146 mbbl/d max, they would have been building refinerys to handle that amount. They dont seem to be doing that....

[pup55]

The real problem with this model is that they assume production growth of 2% globally, when the reality is closer to 4%. If I have copied their model correctly, if you put 4% growth into the model, you get a peak in about 2020 for the conservative case, 2027 for the middle case, and 2034 for the upper case.

But, what they do not point out is that in these models, the downslope of this curve is really really painful. In the "conservative case" we go from 53 gb in 2020 to 19 gb in 2030, a 50% reduction in 10 years. In the most optimistic case, we go from 107 gb to 41 in 10 years. The little chart in their paper confirms this even in their models at 2% growth.

So, you had better hope that this does not come true, because the longer the peak is delayed, no matter what model you use, the more painful the withdrawal. Better to have the peak when the world is consuming 30 gb/yr instead of 107 gb/yr.

[mididoctors]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pup55', 'S')o, you had better hope that this does not come true, because the longer the peak is delayed, no matter what model you use, the more painful the withdrawal. Better to have the peak when the world is consuming 30 gb/yr instead of 107 gb/yr.

[nth]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MacG', 'W')ell, you seem to be in good company of the refiners also. If they had believed in 146 mbbl/d max, they would have been building refinerys to handle that amount. They dont seem to be doing that....

[sampo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nth', 'W')here are you? As far as I know, refineries are investing billions of dollars upgrading and increasing their capacity.
US refineries are not building new ones, but BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron are all building new refineries in other countryes. It is safe to say they all don't believe in PO by 2010 as predicted by several prominent PO.

[seldom_seen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nth', '[')As far as I know, refineries are investing billions of dollars upgrading and increasing their capacity. US refineries are not building new ones, but BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron are all building new refineries in other countryes. It is safe to say they all don't believe in PO by 2010 as predicted by several prominent PO.

[khebab]

I agree with pup55, they used a R/P= 10 to model depletion which is equivalent to a yearly depletion rate of around 20%! (see August ASPO newsletter (item 580) for a good discussion on the use of the reserve to production ratio). According to a logistic model, a value of 40 years for R/P ratio is more realistic (5% depletion rate) which of course brings back the PO date toward the present.

You can check also the following threads:

Why bash EIA?
Help with deconstructing the EIA 2037 peak curve?

[aahala]

I am not aware of any evidence to suggest that oil predictors in 2005 are
any more accurate about an event 32 years in the future than oil predictors
were in 1973 about 2005.

If you compound a number at any particular rate for 32 years, a slight
divergence from the rate that actually occurs compounds the difference
between your prediction and the actual event.

[Antimatter]

These curves are nonsense, the peak is way too sharp. They actually admitted this in one of their presentations/articles, they showed a more rounded off curve with a slightly less steep decline, which resulted in peak in 2030 rather than 2037 for the 3TB UUR/2% growth case. Will try to find it. They showed a ~5% decline.

[frankthetank]

Energy Dept future outlook IS a joke!
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he U.S. economy is still expected to grow 3% annually for the next 25 years

[pup55]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')EO2006 and AEO2005; however, the higher world oil prices in the AEO2006 reference case lead to more domestic crude oil production, lower demand for petroleum products, and consequently lower levels of petroleum imports. Net petroleum imports are expected to account for 60 percent of demand (on the basis of barrels per day) in 2025 in the AEO2006 reference case, up from 58 percent in 2004. In the AEO2005 reference case, net petroleum imports were projected to account for 68 percent of U.S. petroleum demand in 2025.

[clv101]

The 2001 EIA International Energy Outlook was absolutely absurd.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]North Sea
Vital Trivia has written a lot about the decline in the North Sea, this is what the IEO2001 had to say about the North Sea:

In the IEO2001 forecast, North Sea production reaches a peak in 2006, at almost 6.6 million barrels/day (mb.d). Production from Norway, Western Europe’s largest producer, is expected to peak at about 3.7 mb/d in 2004 and then gradually decline to about 3.1 mb/d by the end of the forecast period with the maturing of some of its large and older fields. The United Kingdom is expected to produce about 3.1 mb/d by the middle of this decade, followed by a decline to 2.7 mb/d by 2020.

The report was published in March 2001 and talks of a peak in 2006. The facts of the matter are that the North Sea had already peaked back in 1999 at 5.947 mb/d! Today we are more than 1mb/d below that 1999 peak.

For Norway they forecasted a peak of 3.7 mb/d in 2004 declining to 3.1mb/d by 2020. In fact Norway had peaked the year earlier (2000) but the real absurdity was the forecasted rate of decline post peak of 1.1% per year. Show me any province, let alone a modern offshore one with a post peak decline rate as slow as that!

The UK forecast of a 3.1mb/d peak in 2005 compares with a reality of a 2.684 mb/d peak in 1999, a full two years before this report was published. The report goes on to forecast a decline to 2.7 mb/d by 2020, an annual fall of less than 1%, when in reality the UK has seen average annual falls of over 7% from 1999.

These forecasted decline rates are most concerning, either the EIA are incredibly ignorant or they are purposefully releasing misleading information.
http://www.vitaltrivia.co.uk/2005/12/44

[frankthetank]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')EW YORK (Reuters) - The United States, where oil production has been declining since the 1970s, has the potential to boost its oil reserves four-fold through advanced injection of carbon dioxide into depleted oilfields, the Department of Energy said on Friday.

The United States, the world's top oil consumer, has been successfully pumping small amounts or carbon dioxide into depleted oil and natural gas fields for 30 years to push out hard-to-reach fossil fuels.

The DOE said 89 billion barrels could potentially be added to current proved U.S. oil reserves of 21.9 billion barrels through injection of carbon dioxide, the main gas that most scientists believe is warming the earth.

The DOE gave no time frame for when the extra barrels could be added.

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he DOE said 89 billion barrels could potentially be added to current proved U.S. oil reserves of 21.9 billion barrels

[nero]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')here do they come up with the CO2 to pull this off? Is it even been proven to work?

[bonjaski]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he DOE said 89 billion barrels could potentially be added to current proved U.S. oil reserves of 21.9 billion barrels

[satjeet]

This is hardly news - it's one of Deffeyes favorite ideas - and he also says that it's a good place to invest.

[frankthetank]

Heres a pic

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')o enhance oil recovery, carbon dioxide (CO2) is pumped underground, where it mixes with oil, lowering the oil’s viscosity and thereby improving the extraction by production wells. About 10 percent of the carbon dioxide comes out with the extracted oil. A good deal of water from previous waterflooding is also extracted with the oil.