[MD]

Look: it used to take drilling a couple holes a couple hundred feet through desert sandstone to squirt out 50,000 barrels per day of nice light crude.

Today they are drilling through 30,000 feet of rock in North Dakota 100 times to get the same production as one of the old lovelies.

That's two orders of magnitude plus another 5X loss in efficiency for processing scale, giving us a hidden energy crisis just waiting to snap anyone on the ass that tries to grow.

Why isn't this little fact getting its due attention?

[copious.abundance]

Look: it used to take drilling a couple holes a couple hundred feet through desert sandstone to squirt out 50,000 barrels per day of nice light crude.

>>> Nope <<<

Today they are drilling through 30,000 feet of rock in North Dakota

If you're referring to the Bakken, the Bakken is not 30,000 feet deep. More like 8,000-12,000.

[MD]

Look: it used to take drilling a couple holes a couple hundred feet through desert sandstone to squirt out 50,000 barrels per day of nice light crude.

>>> Nope <<<

Today they are drilling through 30,000 feet of rock in North Dakota

If you're referring to the Bakken, the Bakken is not 30,000 feet deep. More like 8,000-12,000.

12000 down, 20000 sideways, dipshit.

[MD]

now waits whilst dipshit pull up some example of some short-lived 2k per day well up there somewhere...

[frankthetank]

MD-

BECAUSE "Hells Kitchen" is on and its a two premiere! Get real?! Everyone knows Chef Ramsey is going to scream at all the rookies and with Robert coming back for another season, who knows what is going to happen

No... People don't give a shit as long as the gas station is full of junk food and cheap gasoline. Media and government would like to keep it pushed off to the side and in the shadows. Better not to upset the sheep while they are feeding....and feeding....and feeding...

You don't get how fat people are in this state. Its insane. oh...and sometimes they wear shorts

[MD]

You don't get how fat people are in this state. Its insane. oh...and sometimes they wear shorts

hah!

We specialize in the round-half-acre look around here. Yes we do. Corn fed...and proud of it!

[copious.abundance]

12000 down, 20000 sideways, dipshit.

Well, yes, if you count the sideways stuff you do get that much.

now waits whilst dipshit pull up some example of some short-lived 2k per day well up there somewhere

Here's some nice, short-lived wells that probably churned out just a few hundred bpd each.

[copious.abundance]

Oh yeah, and they flared the natural gas back then, too. What a waste of energy!

[shortonsense]

Oh yeah, and they flared the natural gas back then, too. What a waste of energy!

Are you claiming that terrible EROEI existed even back in the ol' days!!! Goodness, say it isn't so!!

[Blacksmith]

MD just ignore him, you could write a book about his fantasies. I just choose to ignore his ignorance.

[copious.abundance]

Look: it used to take drilling a couple holes a couple hundred feet through desert sandstone to squirt out 50,000 barrels per day of nice light crude.

Sorry MD, but . . .

>>> Signal Hill Oil Field, CA <<<

By the fall of 1923, 259,000 barrels of crude was being produced every day from nearly 300 wells. This photograph was taken in 1932, only 10 years after the discovery of oil at Signal Hill.

259,000 bpd from 300 wells = 863 bpd per well.

Sorry, no "couple holes" churning out 25,000 bpd each.

[Jack]

Why isn't this little fact getting its due attention?

Because people prefer comfortable nonsense to uncomfortable truths.

You already knew that.

[DantesPeak]

Look: it used to take drilling a couple holes a couple hundred feet through desert sandstone to squirt out 50,000 barrels per day of nice light crude.

Today they are drilling through 30,000 feet of rock in North Dakota 100 times to get the same production as one of the old lovelies.

That's two orders of magnitude plus another 5X loss in efficiency for processing scale, giving us a hidden energy crisis just waiting to snap anyone on the ass that tries to grow.

Why isn't this little fact getting its due attention?

Good point. There was a similar thread on "Cliff OIl". http://peakoil.com/peak-oil-discussion/cliff-oil-t54427.html?hilit=Cliff%20Oil

It would be also very interesting if someone could put together a mathematical model, using estimates of energy returned on energy invested (such as in your example), that would give us a more specific estimate of the net amount of oil available.


We had a thread on "Cliff Oil", which presented some startling conclusions, but it was not clear where the underlying data came from, and what assumptions were made.

[AirlinePilot]

You Idiot, you really are clueless arent you. Your math is so naive I cant even begin to attempt to explain it to you. I'll give you a hint. oil wells produce at different rates at different times.

Your argument FAILS

[copious.abundance]

OK, for anyone who thinks they're smarter than me, I offer the following challenge:

Find 5 onshore oil fields which, prior to about 1980 (or even later if you like), which had a per-well average production rate of at least 25,000 bpd (per MD's statement in the first post) in at least one year.

Heck, I'll even be nice and bump that down to 20,000 bpd per well!

Since y'all are constantly saying, "It's all about the flow rates," individual outlyer wells do not count. The occasional gusher which spit out 100K bpd was not usually a production well, and it was an outlyer. The only thing which matters is performance of an entire field, not just one or two postcard wells. If we want to know how wells in days of yore performed, we need to find out their typical performance, not the performance of a superstar well here and there.

Go at it. Prove me wrong.

[miraculix]

nit picking - aren't we OF2 ?

Besides, you've already proved MD's point twive w/in this thread - inadverntently I suppose:

I'll assume there were fewer wells in 1980 than there are now.

for instance.

It is entirely irrelevant if such 50k bpd wells existed anywhere - simply a moot point.

Keep your eyes on the EIOER ball brother OF2. Are you in disagreement with the notion that EIOER is declining for the oil industry at large?

[Quinny]

Attempting to equate the cost ($'s or Energy) of the derrick for a timber/steel built wells capable of drilling a short depth and extracting under natural pressure with the cost of drilling the depths/distances in the conditions we are currently working is a very silly thing to do!

[copious.abundance]

nit picking - aren't we OF2 ?

Besides, you've already proved MD's point twive w/in this thread - inadverntently I suppose:

I'll assume there were fewer wells in 1980 than there are now.

for instance.

It is entirely irrelevant if such 50k bpd wells existed anywhere - simply a moot point.

Keep your eyes on the EIOER ball brother OF2. Are you in disagreement with the notion that EIOER is declining for the oil industry at large?

No, I am not nit-picking, and it is not a moot point. In his opening thread, MD said:

Look: it used to take drilling a couple holes a couple hundred feet through desert sandstone to squirt out 50,000 barrels per day of nice light crude.

Today they are drilling through 30,000 feet of rock in North Dakota 100 times to get the same production as one of the old lovelies.

Those "old lovelies" on average did not produce anywhere near 25,000 bpd, and they were not always light crude (the stuff in California, for example, was heavy oil).

Peakers have romanticized these old oil fields, but they are hardly worthy of romanticization.

[copious.abundance]

You Idiot, you really are clueless arent you. Your math is so naive I cant even begin to attempt to explain it to you. I'll give you a hint. oil wells produce at different rates at different times.

Your argument FAILS

Umm . . hello? If you had actually read my posts you would have noticed that the per-well production rates I posted were at each of those field's peak production rates!!

Yes it's true - the figures I posted were during each of those field's prime!

[copious.abundance]

Attempting to equate the cost ($'s or Energy) of the derrick for a timber/steel built wells capable of drilling a short depth and extracting under natural pressure with the cost of drilling the depths/distances in the conditions we are currently working is a very silly thing to do!

A steel or wood derrick capable of drilling a short depth and extracting under natural pressure was the early 20th-century technological equivalent of a fraccing well drilling 10,000 feet down and then 10,000 or more feet horizontally which pumps out the oil after completion.

People do what they are technologically capable of doing at the time.