Just how close to Peak Oil are we?

Graeme

Megaprojects update: Just how close to Peak Oil are we?

Starvid

Leanan · News Editor Joined: May 20, 2004 Posts: 4490

Skrewbowski and the other "bottom up" analysts are way too optimistic. I think it's pretty well established now that oil companies tend to be too optimistic.

There was a fascinating post at TOD by a guy whose company had done an analysis of the past 15 years' worth of new production. Time and again, it took longer than expected, peaked at a lower level than expected, and declined sooner and more steeply than expected.

Case in point: Saudi Aramco recently announced that Khursaniyah, which was supposed to go online last year, is being delayed. Rumor is at least until March, possibly until summer. Manifa is also being delayed.

Call it "Thunder Horse Syndrome." Speaking of which, it was originally scheduled to start producing in what, 2005? Then it was July 2006, then it was the end of 2007. It's now the "second half of 2008."

Atlantis was scheduled to start in 2005 as well, and it just started producing.
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"The problems of today will not be solved by the same thinking that produced the problems in the first place." - Albert Einstein

Starvid

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Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

Micki

Leanan · News Editor Joined: May 20, 2004 Posts: 4490

Someone once posted a graph of Skrewboski's predictions vs. reality. Let's just say it didn't give me a lot of confidence in the bottom-up method.

TOD does regular updates of all the peak oil models. This is the latest. Skrebowski is way off. Curiously, it's Bakhtiari who's the most accurate so far, even though his analysis is one of the oldest.

I don't think we'll see a "peak." More and more, it looks like the "plateau oil" predictions were right.
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"The problems of today will not be solved by the same thinking that produced the problems in the first place." - Albert Einstein

Starvid

The things you were looking for? If you want something more extensive, send him a mail and ask if you can check his database.
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Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

billp

KevO · Expert Joined: May 24, 2005 Posts: 2333

Zahl · Tar Sands Joined: Jan 02, 2008 Posts: 25

Considering that in recent months both IEA and EIA have reported new world supply records and global net exports are trending strongly upwards, Skrebowski is not too optimistic.

TheDude

AirlinePilot

All those numbers depend on decline remaining pretty much flat. if you look hard at the graphs on the Wiki page it looks like after sometime next year (possibly sooner) we lose the battle from this last gasp of production with decline. To me this is a very significant point in this whole PO issue. It could happen sooner than that if we lose just a few of the larger producing fields around the world due to water cuts or crashing production.

The problems are twofold, are reserve numbers accurate? and what happens if decline accelerates? It doesn't appear that we are reversing decline, so you have to consider this.

shortonoil · Fission Joined: Dec 02, 2004 Posts: 2524 Location: VA USA

AirlinePilot said:

Valdemar

Indeed. Stuart Staniford's treatise on this does seem to show that, while mega-projects are still quite far from extinct, they are needing to be bigger and bigger just to keep us afloat.

How that can be construed as a good thing is mysterious to me. It's great that we're finding such amazing projects, even if they are declining in number over the years. But if even they can only off-set declines today, what good are they in the future?
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