Are Future Reserves Out of Our Reach

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands – On the opening day of the SPE/IADC Drilling Conference & Exhibition, Sjoerd Brouwer, conference chairman, assembled a plenary session panel of industry leaders to debate whether reserves are in fact beyond our reach. The panel included Saleh Al-Dawas of Saudi Aramco, Roelof Platenkamp of Shell E&P, Chris Reddick with BP and Schlumberger’s Sami Iskander.

“Beyond our reach” is a relative term. In many cases reserves that were difficult, if not impossible, to produce 25 years ago have long since been exploited. So what of tomorrow’s challenges? Will they be technical, environmental, financial, geopolitical or a combination thereof?

Shell’s Platenkamp kicked off the nearly two hour discussion stating “the stone age did not come to an end due to the lack or stones. Similarly, the hydrocarbon age is likely not to end due to a lack of resources.” Several consistent themes emerged. Foremost, the panel agreed that there is not a real shortage of resources. Panel moderator, Robert Samek of McKinsey & Company, presented data demonstrating that the predicted peak for oil and gas production has passed many times. However, through technology, harder-to-reach reserves continue to increase available reserves. Iskander explained that the Earth’s difficult-to-reach resources are obtainable providing we continue to develop detection and recovery technologies. “However, developing these technologies to their fullest potential will require that service providers, IOCs and NOCs work together toward mutual goals,” he added.

Oversupply of data is another problem facing the industry in this information age. Shell’s Platenkamp explained that “the separation of useful from spurious data is beginning to be a real problem.” Reddick took the point further, saying that “our ability to acquire data has exceeded our ability to do something with it.”

Schlumberger