The Peak Oil Crisis: The Deepwater Horizon

Shell, which is about to start drilling in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, has filed new safety plans for their proposed projects. The administration is obviously going to take a very hard look at drilling in areas that are hundreds or even thousands of miles from help if something should grow wrong. It is one thing to drill in the Gulf of Mexico where all sorts of emergency equipment is available within a matter of hours and quite another to drill in the sparsely settled polar regions. The Norwegian and Canadian governments are starting to raise questions about the standards for offshore drilling and are likely to adhere to whatever recommendations come out of the investigations of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Yet another serious problem for the prospects of future oil production is starting to emerge. The deepwater wells, on which we are basing much of our energy future, may not be as productive as previously thought. Until recently the poster child for deepwater oil production was BP’s Thunderhorse platform that, after years of delay, started producing in 2008 and was supposed to produce a billion barrels of oil at the rate of 250,000 barrels a day (b/d). At first all seemingly went well with production reaching 172,000 b/d in January of 2009, but then production started falling rapidly to a low of 61,000 b/d last December. BP refuses to comment publicly on what is happening at Thunderhorse, but outside observers are growing increasingly skeptical that the platform will ever produce the planned billion barrels. At least 25 other deepwater projects are said to be facing problems of falling production, raising the question of just how much oil these very expensive deepwater projects will ever produce.

Tom Whipple