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Cliff Oil

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby Novus » Tue 24 Jan 2006, 23:14:25

All of the worlds most aggressively exploited fields will have "Cliff" like fall offs in the 10% to 20% decline rates. These steap decline rates will mean that at peak production 60%-70% of the URR had been aleady depleated. We have the North Sea declining at 16% and Cantarell in Mexico declining at 14%. If Burgan or god forbid Ghawar decline at such rates we truely are in trouble. The last barrel of oil to be exported anywhere could be less than ten years away.
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby turmoil » Tue 24 Jan 2006, 23:30:01

Just to be clear (and I don't mean to speak for anyone else), oil(in this case) = liquid petroleum, not shale, or sands, or Natural gas.
Last edited by turmoil on Wed 25 Jan 2006, 21:31:16, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby MonteQuest » Tue 24 Jan 2006, 23:41:05

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ubercynicmeister', 'L')OL, the problem is not going to be the "availablity" of Oil, Post peak. It'll be the damn price of it.


Yes, and there is far too little discussion of this fact. I don't care what basket of energies you can come up with, they will never be as cheap as oil (and all of it's distillates), as readily available, as energy dense, and as safely portable.

Not even close.

And they have to be.

If not close, even cheaper.

And they won't be.

Ever.

Peoples' "access" to energy will be severely curtailed merely by the cost.
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby MonteQuest » Tue 24 Jan 2006, 23:55:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('duke3522', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('27010', 'I') think that some alternative thought is needed, we all assume that peak oil takes place when half of the recoverable oil is gone. This may have been true in the 1970s when America peaked, but since then technology has improved allowing previously unrecoverable oil to be recovered. This newly recoverable oil was not factored into the peak oil equation when it was first introduced by Hubbard and as such most modern applications of the peak oil theory ignore it too. What I am trying to suggest is that peak oil may occur later than once 50% of recoverable oil is gone, lets say 75% for the sake of giving an example. We have therefore managed to keep an adequate production level going beyond the 50 % mark and we are now at the approach to a sheer drop when we reach a point where there is no possible method of extracting the rest. To give an example with made up figures as I dont have any info to calculate correct ones, it is possible that production will rise to a point where 30% of recovered oil is recovered and remain steady until 75% is recovered. When I say steady, it would not appear to be steady as world demand and the amount of oil being produced would dictate the quantity and speed of extraction at any given point of the worlds economic cycle. I have not seen any graph of North Sea production, but I do not believe that there was 50% of the recoverable oil left at Peak, or it wouldnt be such a severe decline now.

I suppose this might seem like a load of rubbish, no doubt those of you better informed than myself will correct me.




This is a very interesting idea. Let me see if I have it in hand here. The idea is that just because we pass the half way point of all oil reserves does not mean that production will begin to decline. That the possibility exists that due to improved technology a decline in production could be pushed out to where between 60-75% of recoverable oil has been consumed.

If peak oil production is being pushed out past the URR’s of oil then how can we have anything but an oil cliff.

I hope Monte or another of our resident experts will chime in on this subject.


27010 seems to assume that you will only use the recovery technology on the way down and not on the way up the production slope.

Sorry. As far as I know, new recovery technologies just make the decline rate greater once the field peaks if pushed too far to increase upslope production.

And I know of no depletion projections that do not factor in new technologies in recovery.

And it seems that an oil well, field, or region follows this bell curve no matter how much technology or how much money you throw at it.

Speed of Decline
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby JustinFrankl » Wed 25 Jan 2006, 01:54:11

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ubercynicmeister', 'L')OL, the problem is not going to be the "availablity" of Oil, Post peak. It'll be the damn price of it.


Yes, and there is far too little discussion of this fact. I don't care what basket of energies you can come up with, they will never be as cheap as oil (and all of it's distillates), as readily available, as energy dense, and as safely portable.

Not even close.

And they have to be.

If not close, even cheaper.

And they won't be.

Ever.

Peoples' "access" to energy will be severely curtailed merely by the cost.

I am of the view that money, cost, utility, and value are really just approximations for energy. Oil will cost more due to the increased energy required to take it out of the ground, relative to everything else we need that energy for.

The reduced access is measured by increased cost, but it's still fundamentally that it requires increased energy, yes?
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby Cobra_Strike » Wed 25 Jan 2006, 02:01:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('turmoil', '.')...If most fields are being pumped at peak rates until around 30% reserves are left, that means world reserves would be 30% of total recoverable oil, and we've used 70%, making 1500 Gb the approximate global recoverable oil.

1000 / .70 = 1428.57

1000 / .65 = 1538.46

1000 / .60 = 1666,66

If this happens, we will be in the stone age in under a decade.

BTW, 1500 was Hubbert's estimate 50 or so years ago. (oops his estimate was 1250...sorry)
Wouldn't the 1500's be a reasonable ballpark if all OPEC reserves were as overstated as Kuwait's were?
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby peripato » Wed 25 Jan 2006, 02:10:32

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '2')7010 seems to assume that you will only use the recovery technology on the way down and not on the way up the production slope.

Sorry. As far as I know, new recovery technologies just make the decline rate greater once the field peaks if pushed too far to increase upslope production.

And I know of no depletion projections that do not factor in new technologies in recovery.

And it seems that an oil well, field, or region follows this bell curve no matter how much technology or how much money you throw at it.

Speed of Decline

Others like Jeff Vail share this viewpoint. Below is an excerpt from a recent article of his dealing with the Kuwaiti Reserve Revisions of 2006:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.')..only the use of water injection and water flood tecniques to keep reservoir pressure artificially high have kept production rates up for the past several years. The problem with this is that when a field who's production rate has been artificially sustained beyond the half-way point finally does begin to decline, its rate of decline tends to be very, very high. 10-18% has been suggested (by Simmons and others)...

Given that the amount of oil we used to think we had is now slashed by some 300 bb's, because all the OPEC revisions of the 1980's must now be called into question since the Kuwaiti information was leaked, then we must have passed peak some time back. Only the furious pumping of super-fields like Cantarell, due to these technological advances, has extended production passed that peak. So does this indicate that production is about to fall off a cliff? Who knows? Only time will tell...

The guys over at The Oil Drum seem to think that we won't even see 5% p.a. declines and not until around 2040 based on their computer models of future world oil production. Nevertheless the decline of cheap oil is a problem for which there is no solution. We may be able to employ technofixes (yet again) to try get around this physical limit, especially if decline rates are as mild as predicted by The Oil Drum, and this buys us enough time to implement alternatives. If that does prove to be the case then we will only be delaying the inevitable day of reckoning, before coming up against even fiercer limits as a result of trying to engineer our way out of our energy predicament. The law of diminishing returns as they apply to technofixes is also a problem for which there is no solution.
Last edited by peripato on Wed 25 Jan 2006, 02:34:45, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby turmoil » Wed 25 Jan 2006, 02:29:56

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cobra_Strike', 'W')ouldn't the 1500's be a reasonable ballpark if all OPEC reserves were as overstated as Kuwait's were?

That's a good question. I don't know how overstated they actually are, but if globally we have depleted around 65% of URR, that means total would be in the 1500s.

1000 / .65 = 1538.46

By the way, for those of you just joining the Peak Oil world, I'm using 1000 Gb because thats the agreed upon estimated consumption to date (see Chevron ads, etc).

Also, rockdoc might(should?) be able to tell us if technology is capable of delaying global peak oil by around 15% (as in 65-50 = 15%). If the total is 1550, lets say, 15% would be 232.5 billion barrels. That seems possible, at least at first glance. That would equal approximate production from 1996-2005. Heh, thats funny. Hubbert predicted peak in 1995.
Last edited by turmoil on Fri 27 Jan 2006, 01:47:30, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby duke3522 » Wed 25 Jan 2006, 02:49:45

MQ,

So what your saying is that even though some fields production may fall off a cliff, oil production world wide is unlikely to fall 10%+ barring a major disaster. More likely once decline begins a 2-3% fall in year to year oil production can be expected.

This brings me back to a question I asked in another thread that never really got answered. Right now oil production stands at about 85m b/d. Now let’s assume that this is about the top of production, and that from this point supply will either bump along a plateau, or decline will begin and in 5-6 years production will fall under 80m b/d.

So my question is: Is 80m b/d a point of no return in oil production? My own opinion is that once oil production declines below 80m b/d there will be no return.
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby AmericanEmpire » Wed 25 Jan 2006, 03:30:32

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f this happens, we will be in the stone age in under a decade.


8O
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby turmoil » Wed 25 Jan 2006, 03:42:30

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AmericanEmpire', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f this happens, we will be in the stone age in under a decade.


8O

Well,

At 10% per year, we could be at 42mbpd in 7 years. Thats a lot of oil, but who will be buying it at $5000/brl +- $3000? The governments of the world will be, at best supplying soup and bread lines.

Or maybe I'm getting carried away again.
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby MonteQuest » Thu 26 Jan 2006, 00:11:13

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('duke3522', 'M')Q,

So what your saying is that even though some fields production may fall off a cliff, oil production world wide is unlikely to fall 10%+ barring a major disaster. More likely once decline begins a 2-3% fall in year to year oil production can be expected.


No, I am saying that no one knows what the rate of depletion will be...but, the fields that have used the technology advances have shown a high rate of depletion post -peak. Cantarell and the North Sea for starters. 15-17%. Exxon is stating 8% decline rates.

What wiil be the average? No one knows.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his brings me back to a question I asked in another thread that never really got answered. Right now oil production stands at about 85m b/d. Now let’s assume that this is about the top of production, and that from this point supply will either bump along a plateau, or decline will begin and in 5-6 years production will fall under 80m b/d.

So my question is: Is 80m b/d a point of no return in oil production? My own opinion is that once oil production declines below 80m b/d there will be no return.


It has been my understanding, that short of some exception like Russia experienced, that once the world peaks, it will decline each year thereafter...no matter what we do.

Even Russia, while increasing production right now, will never reach the previous peak of 1987.
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby Kickinthegob » Mon 13 Feb 2006, 04:45:25

Osurac, excellent observation. I am thinking cliff all the way and the 2 reasons have already been mentioned in the thread. It sure looks as if the new "technologies" like water and gas injection will create a skewered nipple sitting on what could have been a natural peak. It could be nasty.

The second reason would be at what point do certain economies collapse and just how high will the price go? That US peak is really a showcase for many peakoil enthusiasts and for good reason but will the world peak look the same in hindsight? So many things are different when you attempt to extrapolate the US peak onto a world peak, I mean it's not like the world will be importing from the moon after peak - shit is going to start coming apart everywhere we use oil.

If I had the power my first priority would be to dismantle or disable the world's nuclear arsenal, we just can't trust anyone in this scenario. It's kinda like working at a post office (Bush admin) and your co-worker (Cheney) comes to work with a shotgun, your first instinct is to run or get the weapon. I sure hope guys like Kunstler are right though, a long emergency type situation but nobody knows!
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Re: Cliff Oil

Unread postby rogerhb » Mon 13 Feb 2006, 04:55:42

I'm more a fan of We're all freaking doomed Oil.
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