Gloomy outlook for oil disputed

…Production from deep-water fields declines at an average, annual rate of 18 percent a year, Cambridge Energy officials said, compared with 10 percent annually in shallow water and 6 percent for onshore fields.

Simmons said in some deep-water fields, the decline rates have been above 30 percent.


About 400 of the fields in the Cambridge Energy study were large, originally containing more than 300 million barrels of reserves. Those fields accounted for nearly half of the world’s oil production.

Output at these larger fields typically ramps up over about six years. Production then plateaus at a level slightly below the peak for about seven years and then begins a long decline that can stretch another 20 years, Cambridge Energy officials said.

What everyone in the industry can agree upon, said Dan Pickering, co-president and head of research at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities in Houston, is that “getting oil out of the ground is harder.”

Houston Chronicle