[ReserveGrowthRulz]

Well, I wouldn't feel bad about being an "amateur" when those of us who do it for a living consistently underestimate initial discoveries nearly right across the board.

There are general rules of thumb starting with Hubbert and Arrington and Roots work on reserve growth, the problem is generally the scheduling issue, and if someone is trying to use backdating numbers to make a point rather than honestly examine the effect.

For example....lets say a given years discoveries are 10 BBO or thereabouts....except after 80 years of production the actual discovered volumes on the intial 10BBO is now 100BBO.....maybe more, maybe less. How these additional producable volumes get layered into the system is the hard part....it doesn't arrive all at once or evenly , some models have it arriving faster than others, and some people want to ignore it completely because it upsets their static view of the problem.

The reason why its a killer for most general modelling techniques is obvious, ending up with perhaps 10X the initial discovery volumes is tough to accomodate if the goal to declare peak oil next week.

[clv101]

Could the fact that these numbers are larger than Campbell’s be because Campbell is counting new discovery made today in a field originally discovered in say 1980 as a 1980 discovery and not a 2006 discovery. Booking reserves for the year the field was originally discovered?

[pup55]

Possibly. Or he could have a better and more comprehensive database of discoveries in which he can do a better job of eliminating the double-announcements.

I have not been at it long enough to be able to understand whether it is typical to make a preliminary field size estimate, then after a few test wells, make a secondary announcement about the test well results. If such a thing happened, that would be a double entry for me, but he might be able to refine his estimate.

Anyway when Campbell's estimate of 2005 discoveries is published, I would be delighted to hear what it is.

[Taskforce_Unity]

IHS Energy number for 2004:

7.7 billion barrels (oil + condensate + deepwater)

IHS Energy number for 2005:

somewhere around 7 billion barrels

[pup55]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '7') billion barrels

[pup55]

I checked my estimate for announced fields in 2004 and it was 7.4 gb.

So, they are evidently just omitting the results of test wells, which is fine.

Anyway, this is not an order of magnitude off, it is maybe a couple of gb off, and the main conclusion remains the same: nominal discoveries are a small fraction of the annual consumption, and the difference will have to be made up by the ability of people to extract 10X the original estimated discovery out of the field, as reservesgrowthrulz suggests.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pup55', 'a')nd the main conclusion remains the same: nominal discoveries are a small fraction of the annual consumption, and the difference will have to be made up by the ability of people to extract 10X the original estimated discovery out of the field, as reservesgrowthrulz suggests.

[WebHubbleTelescope]

Half of the reserve growth gets spread out over such a large time constant that it doesn't contribute to a strong peak, making it less critical to defining the classical Hubbert peak.

As to the rest, the estimate stabilizes if you wait a few years. Nothing wrong with backdating, unless you think this is some kind of game for purists we are playing.

http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2006/0 ... rowth.html

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('WebHubbleTelescope', '
')As to the rest, the estimate stabilizes if you wait a few years. Nothing wrong with backdating, unless you think this is some kind of game for purists we are playing.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReserveGrowthRulz', 'F')or example....lets say a given years discoveries are 10 BBO or thereabouts....except after 80 years of production the actual discovered volumes on the intial 10BBO is now 100BBO.....maybe more, maybe less.

[WebHubbleTelescope]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReserveGrowthRulz', ' ')And the assumption that gee whiz technology is the sole culprit doesn't fly either, for example, if you apply conventional reserve growth analysis to continuous type accumulations, Verma has conclusions which link increases in area to the increase rather than anything remotely resembling technology. Thats a completely different arguement however, since most reserve growth studies are concentrated on conventional fields.

[WebHubbleTelescope]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReserveGrowthRulz', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('WebHubbleTelescope', '
')As to the rest, the estimate stabilizes if you wait a few years. Nothing wrong with backdating, unless you think this is some kind of game for purists we are playing.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')increases in area"

This point is very telling. Several of these papers including Annastasi point to the difficulty in separating reserve growth from new discoveries that occur in close proximity to the original fields. So in one case you have backdating and in the other case you just have additional discoveries -- which get counted conventionally, i.e. not backdated.

This brings up the fine distinction between reserve growth curves and creaming curves describing a region. These two curves have similar shapes and it seems a matter of taste which term to use when you get data. Both creaming curves and reserve growth curves have steep slopes that turn into a creep upward.

[WebHubbleTelescope]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', '
')I guess all I am trying to get across is that the idea of reserve growth makes perfect sense to us folks who deal with the discovery-development-production history of fields. The unfortunate thing is it just comes across as magic to those that haven't been directly involved in it. Not sure if there is a better way of explaining it.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('WebHubbleTelescope', ' ')I find this whole topic of oil extraction incredibly easy to understand and reason about, much more intuitive than my fields of study statistical and quantum mechanics, even when that physics stuff never got mired by the arcana of lingo, messy data, and double-talk politics that oil production seems to thrive in.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')utting it another way, giving up and calling it "magic" in this area of investigation is like the coach deciding to punt the football when his team has a first down and goal to go, not trusting that he can impart his years of wisdom into his players heads.

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', '
')Again, I reiterate you can model production til you are blue in the face....you can come up with stochaistic estimates....run Monte Carlo's etc. etc.......but if you're understanding of the underlying data is poor your answer will also be poor.

[nero]

I think Reservegrowthrulz is right about how important reserve growth has been histroically. My question would be however about applying the A&R analysis to more recent estimates. It is not apparent that reserve growth in the future will follow the same trend as the past. The data indicates that reserve growth as found using A&R's methodology has been decreasing as I recall (I'll hunt up the IHS presentation later)

[pup55]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'r')eserve growth as found using A&R's methodology has been decreasing