Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 10:41 pm Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
....Ohio was used by Hubbert in one of, if not THE original paper, as an example of his bell curve. The problem is, when the extraordinary pressures of the boycott/embargos in the 70's was applied to this "depleted" area, the curve reversed and Ohio climbed back to a large portion of its "old" peak production.
Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 10:57 pm Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
I'm guessing here because I don't have Hubberts paper or the graph sitting here in front of me, but I think the Ohio peak was somewhere in the 1920's? 1910's? The second peak came along in the late-70's, early 80's. If memory serves, it seems like the actual PEAK lasted as long as the first one, which is to say, not for long. Of course, the pressures involved which caused the second peak were gone within a few years. Hubberts example of the state ran from late-1800's to 1950's if I recall correctly. Is quite a nice bell shaped curve, which is why he used it as an example I imagine.
The reason I like this example so well is I was working in those fields and going to school when that boom was going on, and am more than a little familiar with some of the details. I didn't discover that Hubbert used it as an example in his original paper until I read it a year ago or so.
Joined: Apr 03, 2004 Posts: 6580 Location: My Grandkids' Farm
Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:03 am Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
Forgive me for sticking my nose in this discussion since it is mostly over my head but I have a simpleton's question.
In my simplistic view of the whole peak theory, the production curve essentially follows the discovery curve with some time lag when political and economics are discounted - http://www.peakoil.com/sample/index.html
So for my uneducated mind, the discovery curve is the key to future production.
I have seen lots of models of the production curve but not one of the discovery curve that attempts to include reserve growth.
Is there such a model? _________________ Make a plan and work it:
Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:44 pm Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
Pops wrote:
So for my uneducated mind, the discovery curve is the key to future production.
I have seen lots of models of the production curve but not one of the discovery curve that attempts to include reserve growth.
Is there such a model?
If there is, I haven't seen it yet. To date, most reserve growth models or measures are graphs of individual fields or countries, showing initial discovery volumes and later ( in time ) estimates of the same thing, and measuring the change ( usually net positive ) of these estimates with time.
I don't think its impossible to do, you would just use your discovery curve only with "grown" volumes instead of initial discovery volumes. The arguement over how to "grow" the volumes itself would lead to a pretty wild discussion I'm betting. Doing it would have the effect of pumping up the volume of the discovered fields to some pretty large sizes.....and would make modern discovery sizes much, much closer to what supply/demand equations might require to keep things in balance.
You can understand how the powers that be might not be enthused about this idea of course, they A) deny reserve growth happens in the first place ( ignoring Hubberts own work on the issue ), B) they then attack its size when they fail on Point A, reducing it at all costs and then C) don't want to pump up their own discovery graphs for fear that the point they are trying to make will disappear, which is, that we don't discover near enough to meet demand. Its a very easy statement to make, and much more dramatic, when you only use 1/10th of the total ACTUAL discovered volume.
Joined: Apr 03, 2004 Posts: 6580 Location: My Grandkids' Farm
Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 3:47 pm Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
The arguement over how to "grow" the volumes itself would lead to a pretty wild discussion I'm betting.
So I assume that (and the rest of the thread) means there isn’t agreement here as well.
In my little mind, that graph of discovery vs. production tells the story. If that graph can be proven wrong I would be more than happy for the extra time.
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
Doing it would have the effect of pumping up the volume of the discovered fields to some pretty large sizes.....and would make modern discovery sizes much, much closer to what supply/demand equations might require to keep things in balance.
According to what you just said regarding the argument as to how to pump up the estimates I wonder how you came to that conclusion. I'm not aruging with the conclusion, just wondering
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
You can understand how the powers that be might not be enthused
... when you only use 1/10th of the total ACTUAL discovered volume.
I do understand from reading some of your posts (not to mention your handle) where you stand on this subject, but I’m not sure exactly who TPTB are that you refer to. I guess what I’m asking is how do you come up with the figure of 10% of actual discoveries? Is that from 1900, 1950, 2000 or what?
Again, I’m not ragging on you - I’m more than willing to be convinced. _________________ Make a plan and work it:
Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 6:36 pm Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
Pops wrote:
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
The arguement over how to "grow" the volumes itself would lead to a pretty wild discussion I'm betting.
So I assume that (and the rest of the thread) means there isn’t agreement here as well.
The complement of "reserve growth" is called "backdating". Discovery curves are not static beasts, many would think set in stone long ago and never updated; in fact discovery curves are living beasts that continually get updated. Backdating gets applied to the USA discovery curves so when you apply that time translation it does indeed look like the discovery mirrors the production curves.
I think the basic disagreement is on the level of transparency in how backdating gets applied. I would suggest that discovery curves get plotted as a family of curves, with each curve showing a specific age progression. Some people think backdating does not get applied at all, leading to a more cornucopian view of 10x reserves than what the discovery curves show.
Below is an example of USA fractional growth over aged discoveries from the Attanasi and Root data.
It's very noisy but the effect of as-defined reserve growth is there.
Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 8:57 pm Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
Pops wrote:
So I assume that (and the rest of the thread) means there isn’t agreement here as well.
In my little mind, that graph of discovery vs. production tells the story. If that graph can be proven wrong I would be more than happy for the extra time..
Then be happy! I might mention that just because its wrong doesn't automatically make the problem of Peak Oil disappear....it might have more to do with a long, drawn out, EXPENSIVE plateau, slower decline post peak. etc etc.
Pops wrote:
According to what you just said regarding the argument as to how to pump up the estimates I wonder how you came to that conclusion. I'm not aruging with the conclusion, just wondering
.
Reserve growth, when fit back to their discovery date and plotted like R&A did, means that alot more oil was discovered, years and years ago, then was originally reported. And it means discoveries today aren't near as small as they appear.
Pops wrote:
I do understand from reading some of your posts (not to mention your handle) where you stand on this subject, but I’m not sure exactly who TPTB are that you refer to. I guess what I’m asking is how do you come up with the figure of 10% of actual discoveries? Is that from 1900, 1950, 2000 or what?
The R&A paper, which has data grouped in a way reasonably represented by the graph WebHubble posted, extrapolates reserve growth through time, NOT production rate. The 10% number I throw out for initial discoveries is because a field discovered and starting to produce this year, is likely to have an ultimate reserve size 10X its initial discovery size, many years from now. So whenever I see a current "discovered" volume, I multiply it by 10 to get a feel for a more "ultimate" size.
Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 9:24 pm Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
So whenever I see a current "discovered" volume, I multiply it by 10 to get a feel for a more "ultimate" size.
And when you see a discovery from Russia, multiply it by 2 to get a feel for the ultimate size.
Unfortunately, the USA is not the center of the oil universe any longer, and we will have to realize that different regions have different reserve reporting philosophies.
Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 10:29 pm Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
WebHubbleTelescope wrote:
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
So whenever I see a current "discovered" volume, I multiply it by 10 to get a feel for a more "ultimate" size.
And when you see a discovery from Russia, multiply it by 2 to get a feel for the ultimate size.
Unfortunately, the USA is not the center of the oil universe any longer, and we will have to realize that different regions have different reserve reporting philosophies.
The Verma paper was more 3X or 4X, wasn't it? Misrepresenting what we don't like just for fun now?
Also, the US hasn't been the center of the universe for some time now, which is why North Sea reserve growth is important, Libya is just getting around to coming back on line and I'm betting its numbers, they SOON will be a changin, and the Middle East? They've changed before, they will change again. Offshore Africa seems to be a pretty hot spot right now as well....lets take bets now as to whether or not, when the studies come out on certain areas', that none of them will have 2 or less as a reserve growth multiplier? Any takers? Didn't someone post a link to a paper where there estimate was 3X or 4X? Matter of fact, I'm trying to think of ANYONE who has ever said reserve growth is only a 2X function, ANYWHERE.
What number WOULD you be willing to bet on Hubble, 4X? 3X 10X? Pick an area, we'll wait for another Verma study to come out....
Interestingly earlier in the presentation he took a sample of north sea fields and looked at their reserve growth and came up with a number on average of about 33%. Different data sets give you different results is the key observation. _________________ Biofuels: The "What else we got to burn?" answer to peak oil.
Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:54 pm Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
WebHubbleTelescope wrote:
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
So whenever I see a current "discovered" volume, I multiply it by 10 to get a feel for a more "ultimate" size.
And when you see a discovery from Russia, multiply it by 2 to get a feel for the ultimate size.
Unfortunately, the USA is not the center of the oil universe any longer, and we will have to realize that different regions have different reserve reporting philosophies.
The Verma paper was more 3X or 4X, wasn't it? Misrepresenting what we don't like just for fun now?
Also, the US hasn't been the center of the universe for some time now, which is why North Sea reserve growth is important, Libya is just getting around to coming back on line and I'm betting its numbers, they SOON will be a changin, and the Middle East? They've changed before, they will change again. Offshore Africa seems to be a pretty hot spot right now as well....lets take bets now as to whether or not, when the studies come out on certain areas', that none of them will have 2 or less as a reserve growth multiplier? Any takers? Didn't someone post a link to a paper where there estimate was 3X or 4X? Matter of fact, I'm trying to think of ANYONE who has ever said reserve growth is only a 2X function, ANYWHERE.
What number WOULD you be willing to bet on Hubble, 4X? 3X 10X? Pick an area, we'll wait for another Verma study to come out....
What is wrong with you? Here is the quote from Verma:
Quote:
Volga-Ural and West Siberia provinces show most of their reserve growth in the first 5-7 years after discovery and little or no growth thereafter. It is difficult to compare the growth in Russian fields with those of the U.S. fields where growth continues even after 90 years, because in Russia oil fields are first evaluated over a 5-7 year period before being produced whereas in the U.S. both the evaluation and production of fields start shortly after their discovery.
So they say that most of the growth is during the first 5-7 years and this is the same period that the Russians evaluate over to get their first estimates of reserve. So they start with an estimate of 1x growth at the end of the 5-7 year period, which in USA terms would amount to a 5x growth (according to Attanasi&Root empirical observations) since we start estimating reserve growth since discovery day 1. So simple scaling from this point would suggest that the Russians can get another factor of 2x at best. This may even be high since Verma says the ultimate Russian reserve growth is 3-5x since the initial discovery, which includes the evaluation period, thus subsuming a significant fraction of the 3-5x growth. I'm sorry that this is such a puzzle, but blame it on the cryptic Verma for being so damn obtuse.
Rockdoc, PhD, also stated recently that:
Quote:
Comparing US and Russian exploration is an apples and oranges argument. In Russia the traditional exploration technique was to drill an exploration well, if it was a discovery the field was delineated by further drilling prior to bringing the field on production, often they ended up with wells spaced at 100 acres prior to bringing the field onstream. As a consequence it is not surprising they have a better idea of ultimate reserves early on. In the US and many other places fields are brought on production as soon as they believe an economic reserve limit has been met....sometimes this can be with very few wells into the field. This type of development makes a lot more sense from the standpoint of economics....taking advantage of the time value of money.
The Russians simply have more information.....which is what reserves growth is all about.
It is all about estimating what the initial discovery is and from everything stated, Russia is much closer after the initial 5-7 year evaluation than the USA gets in their non-speculative immediate (i.e highly conservative) prediction. This Russian estimate does not constitute backdating because it is part of the evaluation. And about half of the USA growth occurs during the first 7 years, which is outside of an evaluation period. I know that you have no use for an evaluation period, preferring some magic, albeit non-speculative, pixie dust to sprinkle over the numbers to create a Peter Pan effect.
Interestingly earlier in the presentation he took a sample of north sea fields and looked at their reserve growth and came up with a number on average of about 33%. Different data sets give you different results is the key observation.
U.K. North Sea shows lots of variability but yes indeed the average data suggests a growth of 1.2x . And Norway about 1.4x . Which is near the absolute version of your relative percentage of 33%.
And global average is about 3x from one of the graphs in the presentation:
If you look at this data and take the start point of 5 years after discovery, then the growth is scaled back by 50% and it looks like my Russian estimate of 2x.
Once again, the ultimate reserve growth depends on your patience in attaining your first estimate.
Interestingly earlier in the presentation he took a sample of north sea fields and looked at their reserve growth and came up with a number on average of about 33%. Different data sets give you different results is the key observation.
Page 22 shows a TRIPLING of reserves...not an increase of 33%, more like a 200% addition to the original number.
Joined: Apr 03, 2004 Posts: 6580 Location: My Grandkids' Farm
Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:34 pm Post subject: Re: Is Reserve Growth a Non-issue??
nero wrote:
Interestingly earlier in the presentation he took a sample of north sea fields and looked at their reserve growth and came up with a number on average of about 33%.
Jeez, even I can understand what nero meant here, but he even explained his point - if it wasn't obvious:
nero wrote:
Different data sets give you different results is the key observation.
I thought this was where the thoughtful, highbrow discussions take place... _________________ Make a plan and work it:
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