Oil Supply May Be Greater Than Previously Thought
Michael Wilkes
Odd Reservoir Off Louisiana Prods
Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning
By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
HOUSTON -- Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330.
Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of
Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while, it
behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island
330's output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had
slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day.
Then suddenly -- some say almost inexplicably -- Eugene Island's fortunes
reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000
barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million
barrels from 60 million. Stranger still, scientists studying the field say
the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from
the oil that gushed 10 years ago.
Fill 'er Up
All of which has led some scientists to a radical theory: Eugene Island is
rapidly refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous source miles below
the Earth's surface. That, they say, raises the tantalizing possibility that
oil may not be the limited resource it is assumed to be.
"It kind of blew me away," says Jean Whelan, a geochemist and senior
researcher from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Connected to Woods Hole since 1973, Dr. Whelan says she considered herself a
traditional thinker until she encountered the phenomenon in the Gulf of
Mexico. Now, she says, "I believe there is a huge system of oil just
migrating" deep underground.
Conventional wisdom says the world's supply of oil is finite, and that it
was deposited in horizontal reservoirs near the surface in a process that
took millions of years. Since the economies of entire countries ride on the
fundamental notion that oil reserves are exhaustible, any contrary evidence
"would change the way people see the game, turn the world view upside down,"
says Daniel Yergin, a petroleum futurist and industry consultant in
Cambridge, Mass. "Oil and renewable resource are not words that often appear
in the same sentence."
Mideast Mystery
Doomsayers to the contrary, the world contains far more recoverable oil than
was believed even 20 years ago. Between 1976 and 1996, estimated global oil
reserves grew 72%, to 1.04 trillion barrels. Much of that growth came in the
past 10 years, with the introduction of computers to the oil patch, which
made drilling for oil more predictable.
Still, most geologists are hard-pressed to explain why the world's greatest
oil pool, the Middle East, has more than doubled its reserves in the past 20
years, despite half a century of intense exploitation and relatively few new
discoveries. It would take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs and
prehistoric plants to account for the estimated 660 billion barrels of oil
in the region, notes Norman Hyne, a professor at the University of Tulsa in
Oklahoma. "Off-the-wall theories often turn out to be right," he says.
Even some of the most staid U.S. oil companies find the Eugene Island
discoveries intriguing. "These reservoirs are refilling with oil,"
acknowledges David Sibley, a Chevron Corp. geologist who has monitored the
work at Eugene Island.
Mr. Sibley cautions, however, that much research remains to be done on the
source of that oil. "At this point, it's not black and white. It's gray," he
says.
Although the world has been drilling for oil for generations, little is
known about the nature of the resource or the underground activities that
led to its creation. And because even conservative estimates say known oil
reserves will last 40 years or more, most big oil companies haven't
concerned themselves much with hunting for deep sources like the reservoirs
scientists believe may exist under Eugene Island.
Economics never hindered the theorists, however. One, Thomas Gold, a
respected astronomer and professor emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca,
N.Y., has held for years that oil is actually a renewable, primordial syrup
continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and
tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is
attacked by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back
to the dinosaurs, he says.
While many scientists discount Prof. Gold's theory as unproved, "it made a
believer out of me," says Robert Hefner, chairman of Seven Seas Petroleum
Inc., a Houston firm that specializes in ultradeep drilling and has worked
with the professor on his experiments. Seven Seas continues to use
"conventional" methods in seeking reserves, though the halls of the company
often ring with dissent. "My boss and I yell at each other all the time
about these theories," says Russ Cunningham, a geologist and exploration
manager for Seven Seas who isn't sold on Prof. Gold's ideas.
Energy Vacuum
Knowing that clever theories don't fill the gas tank, Roger Anderson, an
oceanographer and executive director of Columbia University's Energy
Research Center in New York, proposed studying the behavior of oil in a
reservoir in hopes of finding a new way to help companies vacuum up what
their drilling was leaving behind.
He focused on Eugene Island, a kidney-shaped subsurface mountain that slopes
steeply into the Gulf depths. About 80 miles off the Louisiana coast, the
underwater landscape surrounding Eugene Island is otherworldly, cut with
deep fissures and faults that spontaneously belch gas and oil. In 1985, as
he stood on the deck of a shrimp boat towing an oil-sniffing contraption
through the area, Dr. Anderson pondered Eugene Island's strange history.
"Migrating oil and anomalous production. I sort of linked the two ideas
together," he says.
Five years later, the U.S. Department of Energy ponied up $10 million to
investigate the Eugene Island geologic formation, and especially the oddly
behaving field at its crest. A consortium of companies leasing chunks of the
formation, including such giants as Chevron, Exxon Corp. and Texaco Corp.,
matched the federal grant.
Time and Space
The Eugene Island researchers began their investigation about the same time
that 3-D seismic technology was introduced to the oil business, allowing
geologists to see promising reservoirs as a cavern in the ground rather than
as a line on a piece of paper.
Taking the technology one step further, Dr. Anderson used a powerful
computer to stack 3-D images of Eugene Island on top of one another. That
resulted in a 4-D image, showing not only the reservoir in three spatial
dimensions, but showing also the movement of its contents over time as
PennzEnergy siphoned out oil.
What Dr. Anderson noticed as he played his time-lapse model was how much oil
PennzEnergy had missed over the years. The remaining crude, surrounded by
water and wobbling like giant globs of Jell-O in the computer model, gave
PennzEnergy new targets as it reworked Eugene Island.
What captivated scientists, though, was a deep fault in the bottom corner of
the computer scan that was gushing oil like a garden hose. "We could see the
stream," Dr. Anderson says. "It wasn't even debated that it was happening."
Woods Hole's Dr. Whelan, invited by Dr. Anderson to join the Eugene Island
investigation, postulated that superheated methane gas -- a compound that is
able to absorb vast amounts of oil -- was carrying crude from a deep source
below. The age of the crude pushed through the stream, and its hotter
temperature helped support that theory. The scientists decided to drill into
the fault.
Unlucky Strike
As prospectors, the scientists were fairly lucky. As researchers they
weren't. The first well they drilled hit natural gas, a pocket so
pressurized "that it scared us," Dr. Anderson says; that well is still
producing. The second stab, however, collapsed the fault. "Some oil flowed.
I have 15 gallons of it in my closet," Dr. Anderson says. But it wasn't
successful enough to advance Dr. Whelan's theory.
A third well was drilled at a spot on an adjacent lease, where the fault
disappeared from seismic view. The researchers missed the stream but hit a
fair-size reservoir, one that is still producing.
It was here, in 1995, that the scientists ran out of grant money and
PennzEnergy lost interest in continuing. "I'm not discounting the
possibility that there is oil moving into these reservoirs," says William
Van Wie, a PennzEnergy senior vice president. "I question only the rate."
Dr. Whelan hasn't lost interest, however, and is seeking to investigate
further the mysterious vents and seeps. While industry geologists have
generally assumed such eruptions are merely cracks in a shallow oil
reservoir, they aren't sure. Noting that many of the seeps are occurring in
deep water, rather than in the relative shallows of the continental shelf,
Dr. Whelan wonders if they may link a deeper source.
This summer, a tiny submarine chartered by a Louisiana State University
researcher will attempt to install a series of measuring devices on vents
near the Eugene Island property. Dr. Whelan hopes this will give her some
idea of how quickly Eugene Island is refilling. "We need to know if we're
talking years or if we're talking hundreds of thousands of years," she says.
Jay Hanson
news:7f88j8$288$1...@camel19.mindspring.com...
> Doomsayers to the contrary, the world contains far more recoverable oil
than
> was believed even 20 years ago. Between 1976 and 1996, estimated global
oil
> reserves grew 72%, to 1.04 trillion barrels. Much of that growth came in
the
> past 10 years, with the introduction of computers to the oil patch, which
> made drilling for oil more predictable.
Forecasts about the abundance of oil are usually warped by inconsistent
definitions of "reserves." In truth, every year for the past two decades the
industry has pumped more oil than it has discovered, and production will
soon be unable to keep up with rising demand.
EUR Oil
Jay Hanson, 12/27/97
"For many years geologists and oil companies have published
estimates of the total amount of crude oil that will ultimately
be recovered from the earth over all time. Remarkably, these
assessments of Estimated Ultimately Recoverable (EUR) oil have
varied little over the past half century."
[ This is direct quote from a 1996 World Resources
Institute paper by James MacKenzie. Take a look:
http://www.wri.org/wri/climate/finitoil/eur-oil.html ]
________________________________________________
IN 1970, OIL PRODUCTION IN THE LOWER-48 "PEAKED"
40 years ago, geologist M. King Hubbert developed a method for
projecting future oil production and predicted that oil
production in the lower-48 states would peak about 1970. This
prediction has proved to be remarkably accurate. Both total and
peak yields have risen slightly compared to Hubbert's original
estimate, but the timing of the peak and the general downward
trend of production were correct.
[ See the graph for the lower-48 at:
http://www.wri.org/wri/climate/finitoil/productn.html ]
And contrary to a commonly held belief, rising fuel prices will
not create new supplies of fuel. Despite quadrupling prices for
oil and gas products, the "moral equivalent of war", and a 280
percent increase in drilling, the United States is producing less
oil today than it did in 1970.
Global oil production will begin to "peak" when approximately
half of the "Estimated Ultimately Recoverable" oil has been
recovered. The exact date is unknown, but it could be soon as
the year 2000:
"Two important conclusions emerge from this discussion. First,
if growth in world demand continues at a modest 2 percent per
year, production could begin declining as soon as the year
2000. Second, even enormous (and unlikely) increases in EUR
oil buy the world little more than another decade (from 2007
to 2018). In short, unless growth in world oil demand is
sharply lower than generally projected, world oil production
will probably begin its long-term decline soon -- and certainly
within the next two decades." [Again from WRI, please take
a look http://www.wri.org/wri/climate/finitoil/futuroil.html ]
"It is reluctantly concluded that there is strong evidence that
the restricted Hubbert Curve for the world's total EUR of oil
may first peak about the year 2000, Fig. 4, after which it may
fluctuate along a horizontal production line (restricted by
Saudi Arabia/OPEC) before inevitable decline ..."
[ from WORLD OIL, October 1995, FUTURE WORLD SUPPLIES,
by L. F. Ivanhoe, http://dieoff.com/page85.htm ]
"At the time of writing in late 1996, there are still three
more years to go until the end of the transition."
[p. 59, THE COMING OIL CRISIS, by C. J. Campbell;
Multi-Science Publishing Company & Petroconsultants,
1997; ISBN 0906522110
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0906522110/3088-4711339-639335 ]
________________
PETROCONSULTANTS
Petroconsultants is the world's leading provider of data and
analysis for petroleum exploration and production. With
headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Petroconsultants maintains
offices in London, Houston, Sydney and Singapore, supported by
over 250 dedicated multilingual and multinational employees and
a worldwide network of correspondents and associates.
[ http://www.petroconsultants.com/ ]
"A new report on world oil resources, World Oil Supply 1930-2050
(Campbell and Laherre, Petroconsultants Pty. Ltd., 1995),
concludes that the planet's oil supplies will be exhausted
much sooner than previously thought.
"The report, written for oil industry insiders and priced at
$32,000 per copy, concludes that world oil production and
supply probably will peak as soon as the year 2000 and will
decline to half the peak level by 2025. Large and permanent
increases in oil prices are predicted after the year 2000."
[ from EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, Spring 1997, THE DEATH OF THE
OIL ECONOMY, by Ted Trainer http://dieoff.com/page116.htm ]
__________________________________________________
ENERGY IS THE PRECONDITION FOR ALL OTHER RESOURCES
There is NO substitute for energy. Although the economy treats
energy just like any other resource, it is NOT like any other
resource. Energy is the precondition for ALL other resources and
oil is the most important form of energy we use, making up about
38 percent of the world energy supply.
NO other energy source equals oil's intrinsic qualities of
extractablility, transportability, versatility and cost. These
are the qualities that enabled oil to take over from coal as
the front-line energy source in the industrialized world in the
middle of this century, and they are as relevant today as they
were then.
Optimists tend to assume that the "quality" (e.g., liquid vs.
solid) of energy we use is not significant, that an infinite
amount of social capital is available to search for and produce
energy, and that an infinite flow of solar energy is available
for human use. Realists know that none of these assumptions is
true.
"If one considers the last one hundred years of the U.S.
experience, fuel use and economic output are highly correlated.
An important measure of fuel efficiency is the ratio of energy
use to the gross national product, E/GNP. The E/GNP ratio has
fallen by about 42% since 1929. We find that the improvement
in energy efficiency is due principally to three factors: (1)
shifts to higher quality fuels such as petroleum and primary
electricity; (2) shifts in energy use between households and
other sectors; and (3) higher fuel prices. Energy quality is
by far the dominant factor." [Cleveland et al., 1984
http://dieoff.com/page17.htm#ENERGY ]
__________________
ECONOMIC IMPLOSION
"The global price of oil after the supply crunch should follow
the simplest economic law of supply and demand: There will be
a major increase in crude oil and all other fuels' prices,
accompanied by global hyperinflation, rationing, etc. After
the associated economic implosion, many of the world's
developed societies may look like today's Russia. The United
States may be competing with China for every tanker of oil,
with the Persian Gulf oil exporters preferring Chinese rockets
to American paper dollars for their oil."
[ from THE FUTURIST, January/February, 1997, GET READY FOR
ANOTHER OIL SHOCK!, by L. F. Ivanhoe
http://dieoff.com/page90.htm ]
As energy prices increase, we become less "energy efficient"
with respect to imported oil. That is, we will have to burn
more energy in order to make more goods and services (to make
more money) to buy a barrel of oil. It's a positive feedback
loop. But there's a thermodynamic limit on how much we can pay!
If as a country, we must spend two barrels of oil to produce
enough goods and services to buy one barrel of oil, it is
impossible for us to pay our overhead -- it is impossible for
us to continue. At that point, America's economic machine is
just plain "out of gas".
For more, see: FOSSILGATE: http://dieoff.com/page122.htm
Jay -- http://dieoff.com/page1.htm
Jay Hanson
news:7f88j8$288$1...@camel19.mindspring.com...
> Still, most geologists are hard-pressed to explain why the world's
greatest
> oil pool, the Middle East, has more than doubled its reserves in the past
20
> years, despite half a century of intense exploitation and relatively few
new
Pass this along to those hard-pressed geologists. <G> Global oil production
is expected to "peak" around 2005.
THE END OF CHEAP OIL
by Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère,
Scientific American, March 1998
According to most accounts, world oil reserves have marched steadily upward
over the past 20 years. Extending that apparent trend into the future, one
could easily conclude, as the U.S. Energy Information Administration has,
that oil production will continue to rise unhindered for decades to come,
increasing almost two thirds by 2020.
Such growth is an illusion. About 80 percent of the oil produced today flows
from fields that were found before 1973, and the great majority of them are
declining. In the 1990s oil companies have discovered an average of seven
Gbo a year; last year they drained more than three times as much. Yet
official figures indicated that proved reserves did not fall by 16 Gbo, as
one would expect rather they expanded by 11 Gbo. One reason is that several
dozen governments opted not to report declines in their reserves, perhaps to
enhance their political cachet and their ability to obtain loans. A more
important cause of the expansion lies in revisions: oil companies replaced
earlier estimates of the reserves left in many fields with higher numbers.
For most purposes, such amendments are harmless, but they seriously distort
forecasts extrapolated from published reports.
To judge accurately how much oil explorers will uncover in the future, one
has to backdate every revision to the year in which the field was first
discovered-not to the year in which a company or country corrected an
earlier estimate. Doing so reveals that global discovery peaked in the early
1960s and has been falling steadily ever since. By extending the trend to
zero, we can make a good guess at how much oil the industry will ultimately
find.
We have used other methods to estimate the ultimate recovery of conventional
oil for each country [see box on next two pages], and we calculate that the
oil industry will be able to recover only about another 1,000 billion
barrels of conventional oil. This number, though great, is little more than
the 800 billion barrels that have already been extracted.
It is important to realize that spending more money on oil exploration will
not change this situation. After the price of crude hit all-time highs in
the early 1980s, explorers developed new technology for finding and
recovering oil, and they scoured the world for new fields. They found few:
the discovery rate continued its decline uninterrupted. There is only so
much crude oil in the world, and the industry has found about 90 percent of
it.
Predicting when oil production will stop rising is relatively
straightforward once one has a good estimate of how much oil there is left
to produce. We simply apply a refinement of a technique first published in
1956 by M. King Hubbert. Hubbert observed that in any large region,
unrestrained extraction of a finite resource rises along a bellshaped curve
that peaks when about half the resource is gone. To demonstrate his theory,
Hubbert fitted a bell curve to production statistics and projected that
crude oil production in the lower 48 U.S. states would rise for 13 more
years, then crest in 1969, give or take a year. He was right: production
peaked in 1970 and has continued to follow Hubbert curves with only minor
deviations. The flow of oil from several other regions, such as the former
Soviet Union and the collection of all oil producers outside the Middle
East, also follows Hubbert curves quite faithfully.
The global picture is more complicated, because the Middle East members of
OPEC deliberately reined back their oil exports in the 1970s, while other
nations continued producing at full capacity. Our analysis reveals that a
number of the largest producers, including Norway and the U.K., will reach
their peaks around the turn of the millennium unless they sharply curtail
production. By 2002 or so the world will rely on Middle East nations,
particularly five near the Persian Gulf (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates), to fill in the gap between dwindling supply
and growing demand. But once approximately 900 Gbo have been consumed,
production must soon begin to fall. Barring a global recession, it seems
most likely that world production of conventional oil will peak during the
first decade of the 21st century.
Perhaps surprisingly, that prediction does not shift much even if our
estimates are a few hundred billion barrels high or low. Craig Bond Hatfield
of the University of Toledo, for example, has conducted his own analysis
based on a 1991 estimate by the U.S. Geological Survey of 1,550 Gbo
remaining-55 percent higher than our figure. Yet he similarly concludes that
the world will hit maximum oil production within the next 15 years. John D.
Edwards of the University of Colorado published last August one of the most
optimistic recent estimates of oil remaining: 2,036 Gbo. (Edwards concedes
that the industry has only a 5 percent chance of attaining that very high
goal.) Even so, his calculations suggest that conventional oil will top out
in 2020.
Factors other than major economic changes could speed or delay the point at
which oil production begins to decline. Three in particular have often led
economists and academic geologists to dismiss concerns about future oil
production with naive optimism.
First, some argue, huge deposits of oil may lie undetected in far-off
corners of the globe. In fact, that is very unlikely. Exploration has pushed
the frontiers back so far that only extremely deep water and polar regions
remain to be fully tested, and even their prospects are now reasonably well
understood. Theoretical advances in geochemistry and geophysics have made it
possible to map productive and prospective fields with impressive accuracy.
As a result, large tracts can be condemned as barren. Much of the deepwater
realm, for example, has been shown to be absolutely nonprospective for
geologic reasons.
What about the much touted Caspian Sea deposits? Our models project that oil
production from that region will grow until around 2010. We agree with
analysts at the USGS World Oil Assessment program and elsewhere who rank the
total resources there as roughly equivalent to those of the North Sea that
is, perhaps 50 Gbo but certainly not several hundreds of billions as
sometimes reported in the media.
A second common rejoinder is that new technologies have steadily increased
the fraction of oil that can be recovered from fields in a basin-the
so-called recovery factor. In the 1960s oil companies assumed as a rule of
thumb that only 30 percent of the oil in a field was typically recoverable;
now they bank on an average of 40 or 50 percent. That progress will continue
and will extend global reserves for many years to come, the argument runs.
Of course, advanced technologies will buy a bit more time before production
starts to fall [see "Oil Production in the 21st Century," by Roger N.
Anderson, on page 86]. But most of the apparent improvement in recovery
factors is an artifact of reporting. As oil fields grow old, their owners
often deploy newer technology to slow their decline. The falloff also allows
engineers to gauge the size of the field more accurately and to correct
previous underestimation-in particular P90 estimates that by definition were
90 percent likely to be exceeded.
Another reason not to pin too much hope on better recovery is that oil
companies routinely count on technological progress when they compute their
reserve estimates. In truth, advanced technologies can offer little help in
draining the largest basins of oil, those onshore in the Middle East where
the oil needs no assistance to gush from the ground.
Last, economists like to point out that the world contains enormous caches
of unconventional oil that can substitute for crude oil as soon as the price
rises high enough to make them profitable. There is no question that the
resources are ample: the Orinoco oil belt in Venezuela has been assessed to
contain a staggering 1.2 trillion barrels of the sludge known as heavy oil.
Tar sands and shale deposits in Canada and the former Soviet Union may
contain the equivalent of more than 300 billion barrels of oil [see "Mining
for Oil," by Richard L. George, on page 84]. Theoretically, these
unconventional oil reserves could quench the world's thirst for liquid fuels
as conventional oil passes its prime. But the industry will be hard-pressed
for the time and money needed to ramp up production of unconventional oil
quickly enough
Such substitutes for crude oil might also exact a high environmental price.
Tar sands typically emerge from strip mines. Extracting oil from these sands
and shales creates air pollution. The Orinoco sludge contains heavy metals
and sulfur that must be removed. So governments may restrict these
industries from growing as fast as they could. In view of these potential
obstacles, our skeptical estimate is that only 700 Gbo will be produced from
unconventional reserves over the next 60 years.
Meanwhile global demand for oil is currently rising at more than 2 percent a
year. Since 1985, energy use is up about 30 percent in Latin America, 40
percent in Africa and 50 percent in Asia. The Energy Information
Administration forecasts that worldwide demand for oil will increase 60
percent (to about 40 Gbo a year) by 2020.
The switch from growth to decline in oil production will thus almost
certainly create economic and political tension. Unless alternatives to
crude oil quickly prove themselves, the market share of the OPEC states in
the Middle East will rise rapidly. Within two years, these nations' share of
the global oil business will pass 30 percent, nearing the level reached
during the oil-price shocks of the 1970s. By 2010 their share will quite
probably hit 50 percent.
The world could thus see radical increases in oil prices. That alone might
be sufficient to curb demand, flattening production for perhaps 10 years.
(Demand fell more than 10 percent after the 1979 shock and took 17 years to
recover.) But by 2010 or so, many Middle Eastern nations will themselves be
past the midpoint. World production will then have to fall.
With sufficient preparation, however, the transition to the post-oil economy
need not be traumatic. If advanced methods of producing liquid fuels from
natural gas can be made profitable and scaled up quickly, gas could become
the next source of transportation fuel [see "Liquid Fuels from Natural Gas,"
by Safaa A. Fouda, on page 92]. Safer nuclear power, cheaper renewable
energy, and oil conservation programs could all help postpone the inevitable
decline of conventional oil.
Countries should begin planning and investing now. In November a panel of
energy experts appointed by President Bill Clinton strongly urged the
administration to increase funding for energy research by $1 billion over
the next five years. That is a small step in the right direction, one that
must be followed by giant leaps from the private sector.
The world is not running out of oil-at least not yet. What our society does
face, and soon, is the end of the abundant and cheap oil on which all
industrial nations depend.
Bloody Viking
: Fair Use Claimed
: Odd Reservoir Off Louisiana Prods
: Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning
: By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
: Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
: HOUSTON -- Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330.
: Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of
: Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while, it
: behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island
: 330's output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had
: slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day.
: Then suddenly -- some say almost inexplicably -- Eugene Island's fortunes
: reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000
: barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million
: barrels from 60 million. Stranger still, scientists studying the field say
: the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from
: the oil that gushed 10 years ago.
Oh, yeah, that crazy oil field. :) I saw that item in the Wall Street
Journal. That is the wierdest thing I ever heard of when it comes to Oil.
This is the only known oilfield with a double Hubbert Peak. As a result,
there are several possible situations.
The most obvious explanation is a wierd deep oil spot to fill 'er up. My
bet is that this is an anomoly. Here are possible scenarios:
This oilfield has an anomolous refiller oil basin powered by seawater
pressure. This is obviously most likely.
The super-deep oil basin is real big, on a par with Saudi Arabia. This
would be good news for those who want Jay Hanson to shut up. :) This
possibility is supported by that oilfield's wierd "new" oil being older
than the original oil. The high pressure methane wells suggests another
possibility....
We have not drilled far enough to find large caches of oil. Nor have we
used our dynamite to use sonar to find these giant hidden basins well. The
most likely source of this hidden oil is old comets from billions of years
ago. Even if the cache is real big, there is still global warming.
All in all, there may well be a shitload of oil to be drilled for. Even
so, it will be costly (compared to today's prices) to get it, both in
terms of money and energy. If there is a shitload of hidden oil from old
comets, this is real good news. :) However, the path of oil production
will end up being a double- Hubbert Peak for the planet. Certainly better
than only one Hubbert Oil Max-Out!
Assuming the oilfield is getting filled back up, the oil must flow through
sand or similar, which may explain the fact that Saudi Arabia has no
problem getting oil out of the ground. The Persian Gulf water is adding
pressure to the hidden basin to push it up. At this time, nobody knows for
sure, not even the real geologists.
In any case, the oil is finite, even if we find we have 10 times the
original EUR of oil. The WSJ did point out that for normal oil, we have
"only" a terabarrel left. We already sucked out .8 of a terabarrel to
date, so we are nearing the Oil Max-Out. Even if we find a giant hidden
cache of oil, we will have an energy crisis a la the 1970s until we suck
it out of the ground. So, we have a setback until we find the hidden
caches. Certainly better than an Easter Island -esque dieoff! :)
Making the dangerous assumption that there's the hidden oil, you have to
consider global warming. Burning it in the cars will pump up the CO2 level
in the air. So, we still need more energy-efficient cars. This also has
the advantage of making the hidden caches last longer too. So, we should
switch to better energy supplies and then use the caches of oil for
petrochemicals to make plastic instead of just burning it in SUVs.
--
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Bruce Hamilton
...
>Oh, yeah, that crazy oil field. :) I saw that item in the Wall Street
>Journal. That is the wierdest thing I ever heard of when it comes to Oil.
>This is the only known oilfield with a double Hubbert Peak. As a result,
>there are several possible situations.
But "double Hubbert peaks" are meaningless. There are large numbers of
oilfields whose resource and reserve estimates have increased with time
due to exploration, but their production cycle depends on the return
on investment assessment of the production.
>We have not drilled far enough to find large caches of oil. Nor have we
>used our dynamite to use sonar to find these giant hidden basins well. The
>most likely source of this hidden oil is old comets from billions of years
>ago. Even if the cache is real big, there is still global warming.
This is not true, there have been several very deep wells drilled,
and some of the methane and other gases found have been used to
support Thomas Gold's hypothesis. He's not a crackpot, his theory
is rational, and possibly chemically sustainable ( clays and minerals
acting as catalysts to convert the methane at the deep temperatures
and pressures ).
There have problems with the location of some large oilfields and
the claimed biogenic nature of oil for decades, but they have been
dismissed as due to unknown geological factors. Gold has been
offering an alternative hypothesis, as have others.
>In any case, the oil is finite, even if we find we have 10 times the
>original EUR of oil. The WSJ did point out that for normal oil, we have
>"only" a terabarrel left. We already sucked out .8 of a terabarrel to
>date, so we are nearing the Oil Max-Out.
I was wordering if you actually knew much about the subject, and
this comment clarifies it, you don't. The WSJ article talked about
reserves, not resources. Proved reserves are accessible with current
technology and prices, but resources require new technology and/or
higher prices, and may not be "proved".
The current prices of oil reflect the situation that there is
far more supply than demand, and that situation is likely to
continue as countries without oil try to limit their financial
exposure by selecting local alternatives that are viable, even
at today's $14/bbl crude oil price.
Despite what Hanson, Hubbert, and others may claim, oil
production will probably peak when users no longer want to
expend precious overseas funds ( as local alternatives and
energy conservation become increasingly viable competitors
to cheap oil ), not because global stocks are exhausted.
Less than a decade ago it was estimated that oil would have
to be $25-30/bbl before alternatives or conservation would
make inroads into demand, but now they already have, when oil
has been $12-$20/bbl.
Bruce Hamilton
Bloody Viking
: But "double Hubbert peaks" are meaningless. There are large numbers of
: oilfields whose resource and reserve estimates have increased with time
: due to exploration, but their production cycle depends on the return
: on investment assessment of the production.
Since the oil is finite, there's at least one Hubbert peak per oilfield.
The wierd oilfield in the article behaved normally until the relieved
pressure let it fill back up. So, it had one Hubbert Peak, then started to
refuel, and it will by necessity have another peak. After all, the hidden
basin is finite in size.
: This is not true, there have been several very deep wells drilled,
: and some of the methane and other gases found have been used to
: support Thomas Gold's hypothesis. He's not a crackpot, his theory
: is rational, and possibly chemically sustainable ( clays and minerals
: acting as catalysts to convert the methane at the deep temperatures
: and pressures ).
: There have problems with the location of some large oilfields and
: the claimed biogenic nature of oil for decades, but they have been
: dismissed as due to unknown geological factors. Gold has been
: offering an alternative hypothesis, as have others.
The wierd oilfield does call into question the biogenesis origin for our
oil. I wonder if there's any good web sites about this wierd oil theory
and our fun oilfield.
: I was wordering if you actually knew much about the subject, and
: this comment clarifies it, you don't. The WSJ article talked about
: reserves, not resources. Proved reserves are accessible with current
: technology and prices, but resources require new technology and/or
: higher prices, and may not be "proved".
I do know about the difference between "reserve" and "resource".
: Despite what Hanson, Hubbert, and others may claim, oil
: production will probably peak when users no longer want to
: expend precious overseas funds ( as local alternatives and
: energy conservation become increasingly viable competitors
: to cheap oil ), not because global stocks are exhausted.
That would be the obvious best case scenario. :) One ironic piece of good
news is that the "real" Hubbert Peak could get people moving on
alternatives and avoid the consequences of oil dependancy. And by
switching now, the peak will be nothing to worry about as we'd be too
bored with oil.
It's sort of like Y2K in a way. Doomcryers for that cried wolf, people
noticed the wolf coming, and fix stuff. By having doomcryers, we end up
remediating, preventing disaster. :) The same is with the oil max-out.
With doomcryers, people will want to switch to alternatives, preventing
problems when oil production does max out! Our discussing this matter is a
start in the right direction. We are here discussing solutions, and
companies are probably grepping our ideas up to use later.
: Less than a decade ago it was estimated that oil would have
: to be $25-30/bbl before alternatives or conservation would
: make inroads into demand, but now they already have, when oil
: has been $12-$20/bbl.
Again, people are starting to use alternatives to oil for energy. This is
good.