[onlooker]

Good point by Dissident as these EOR techniques just are accelerating production while empyting the reservoirs that much faster. Even I, a novice can apprehend that. Which as Dissident said will make the demise of many reserves all the more extreme and abrupt. So our bounty now will be our barreness in a short time. But all to satisy a world that needs and wants ever more energy.

[AdamB]

Good point by Dissident as these EOR techniques just are accelerating production while empyting the reservoirs that much faster. Even I, a novice can apprehend that.

You BELIEVE it, as you have stated before, you know no more about EOR than Short does resource estimates, regression analysis or getting appropriate professionals involved in his work study project so that he doesn't look like..well...a welsher who created an equation that can't predict a coin toss flip on one year in advance oil price.

And something your BELIEF doesn't change is when EOR doesn't accelerate production but changes incremental recovery factors, then this is what happens next... no belief necessary...just the application of what the appropriate professionals understand, and as you've admitted before, you don't.

Which as Dissident said will make the demise of many reserves all the more extreme and abrupt. So our bounty now will be our barreness in a short time. But all to satisy a world that needs and wants ever more energy.

And Dissident, you figure he just doesn't believe first, like you do, and take his guidance straight from the Bible of Peak Oil? You guys sing in the same choir, as best I can tell.

[spike]

Yes, Baha, I agree about the danger of climate change from abundant oil. Regarding predictions, I have long ranted about the way too many judge good or bad predictions without asking "why?" 25 years ago at MIT I argued that economists were relying on a bad theory to predict that prices would gradually rise over the long term. https://books.google.com/books/about/Th ... SuOwAACAAJ
Dissident, what evidence do you have to support your views of a sharp, asymmetric decline? M Lynch

[Plantagenet]

I agree about the danger of climate change from abundant oil. Regarding predictions, I have long ranted about the way too many judge good or bad predictions without asking "why?" 25 years ago at MIT I argued that economists were relying on a bad theory to predict that prices would gradually rise over the long term. https://books.google.com/books/about/Th ... SuOwAACAAJ
Dissident, what evidence do you have to support your views of a sharp, asymmetric decline? M Lynch

A most courteous welcome to you, Michael Lynch.

1. Many of your predictions regarding oil pricing and oil availability have proven prescient.

2. The evidence of sharp, asymmetric declines in oil production after a peak is most clearly shown by the way oil production at the Mexican Cantarell field collapsed after years of EOR. Its a fact that some individual fields do see precipitous production declines.

3. Looking ahead, there is no way to know if global oil production will collapse in a similar way---a very good case can be made that TOS etc. will prevent this----but nonetheless precipitous declines at one or more supergiant fields will likely be problematical for the global oil market. One of the main concerns is at Saudi's Ghawar field, where EOR has been going on for decades. Of course Simmons pointed this out some time ago, and it hasn't happened yet, but at some point Ghawar almost certainly will indeed go into an asymmetric and precipitous production decline, removing 5 million bbls/day from the global oil market.

CHEERS!

[ralfy]

Costs rose over the long term.

[Darian S]

You need to brush up on your history as to how long shale wells have been producing. Devonian shale to be exact. Doesn't anyone here go to AAPG conferences to get real information anymore, people just say stuff without knowing anything?

That says natural gas, haven't read it all so not sure if they talk oil. But multiple articles have said extremely sharp drop in production within a few years.

Shale might last decades but when talking about oil it may be at say 1% of original output,that is it would still be far lower than the original output. If you bring 3000 wells online within a few years and they output say 30% of say USA output, and they drop to say 1~% of original output, that's 0.3% of USA output or basically nothing. That basically wipes 30% production off the map.



EDIT:
Will have to look at figures, have heard numbers near 10%. So will need to verify. Still a drop to 10% would mean if we were at 30% going down to 3%, basically just as bad a scenario

e.g.

As seen, the decline rate is high the first year, 74%, and gradually decreases to 47 and 19% during the second and third years. As a result, remaining production as share of the well’s IP is only 26% at the end of the first year. After 3 years only 11% of the IP(Initial production) level remains. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11053-016-9323-2

[rockdoc123]

One of the main concerns is at Saudi's Ghawar field, where EOR has been going on for decades. Of course Simmons pointed this out some time ago, and it hasn't happened yet, but at some point Ghawar almost certainly will indeed go into an asymmetric and precipitous production decline, removing 5 million bbls/day from the global oil market.

It has not been under EOR for decades. It has been under water flood which is not EOR.
There is a more likely case declines will be gradual. The reason being that as time progresses more and more wells will be gradually shutin. IT isn't going to happen all at once.

The evidence of sharp, asymmetric declines in oil production after a peak is most clearly shown by the way oil production at the Mexican Cantarell field collapsed after years of EOR. Its a fact that some individual fields do see precipitous production declines.

A bad example given Cantarell experienced a number of problems. The nitrogen flood worked pretty well initially as it repressured the gas cap but Pemex was producing at what was likely too high a rate resulting in both gas and water coning along fractures which are quite prevalent in the field. This effectively stopped oil production quickly (all the wells were producing was water and gas, there was lots of oil left in the matrix but the dual permeability determined they would have to do some serious intervention to get at it). The overall recovery to date in the number of fields that comprise the Cantarell complex is lower than would be anticipated in any EOR scheme (I believe there is one field with around 40% recovery but the rest are generally 25% or lower in comparison to Pemex projection of 50%).The reason the field is producing but at a low rate is Pemex has instigated a program of reduced drawdown on the wells and integration of a geomechanical model into their injection scheme. They also finally realized they had screwed up the field and didn't have the technology or knowhow to fix it and hence offered up much of the area in bid rounds for foreign participation.

[AdamB]

You need to brush up on your history as to how long shale wells have been producing. Devonian shale to be exact. Doesn't anyone here go to AAPG conferences to get real information anymore, people just say stuff without knowing anything?

That says natural gas, haven't read it all so not sure if they talk oil. But multiple articles have said extremely sharp drop in production within a few years.

Figure 5, demonstrating Bakken oil production decline.

And you said "shale wells", not "shale oil wells". Shale oil has been produced since at least the 1860-1880, in the Ohio River Valley, from both overlaying Mississippian Sands (occasionally claimed to be late Devonian) such as the Berea Sand, or the devonian source rock itself.

Shale might last decades but when talking about oil it may be at say 1% of original output,that is it would still be far lower than the original output.

Of course. Which is why stripper wells exist, regardless of whether or not they are produced from source rocks, reservoir rocks, or both.

If you bring 3000 wells online within a few years and they output say 30% of say USA output, and they drop to say 1~% of original output, that's 0.3% of USA output or basically nothing. That basically wipes 30% production off the map.

Fortunately, if you examine the information provided by the USGS, the drop doesn't look to be 1% of original output across the time span, call it 4.5% after 10 years. And this is only unexpected to people who have never produced wells before. Would you like to compare this decline to say, wells from Prudhoe Bay? Wells drilled in the early 2000's are producing about at 25% of their original rates. Do you think this difference is as much a "sharp drop" as those from the Bakken?

One is certainly smarter than the other, both are pretty sharp drops, none of this is unexpected, and is beaten into any production engineer in the field by the end of their first week. Wells will make less tomorrow than they did today. It has been, is, and will continue to be so until peak oil finally does arrive.

EDIT:
Will have to look at figures, have heard numbers near 10%. So will need to verify. Still a drop to 10% would mean if we were at 30% going down to 3%, basically just as bad a scenario

I did not speculate with the numbers I gave you above. I referenced in one case actual scientists who do this for a living, and built the other one myself in about 3 minutes, because answering it struck my sense of curiosity the right way.

e.g.

As seen, the decline rate is high the first year, 74%, and gradually decreases to 47 and 19% during the second and third years. As a result, remaining production as share of the well’s IP is only 26% at the end of the first year. After 3 years only 11% of the IP(Initial production) level remains. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11053-016-9323-2

Oh goody! Peak oilers from Sweden are going to explain decline curve analysis 101!! How wonderful!! I wonder if they know this type of work is usually relegated to technicians or newby engineers for warmup to real work? Anyway, I have only one comment on the reference you provided. Why do you think they described the entire sample set when there are 3 distinctly different producing regimes within the Eagle Ford, the decline parameters and EURs of which are all different? Could it be because fitting lines to production data without understanding is what amateurs do? Dumb ones? I didn't see a geologic map of any kind, thermal maturity, thickness, strat column, saturations, none of it. Must not matter to folks from Sweden who probably haven't touched an oil well in their life, I mean, who needs to know anything about geology when it comes to fitting declines to time series data...sound familiar? Only peakers would ignore the most basic sciences involved in their rush to do the curve fitting thing.

[Plantagenet]

water flood which is not EOR.

I can't tell if you are a liar or just very stupid. You claim to have a background in the oil biz, but then you post silliness like this.

Have you ever heard of the oil service company called Schlumberger? They are the largest and perhaps the most respected oil service company in the world. If you don't know who they are then I suggest you google them up before posting any more silliness.

Schlumberger specifically defines water flooding as enhanced oil recovery. The term "enhanced oil recovery" is right there in the Schlumberger definition of water flooding. Check it out. The definition begins.... Terms: waterflooding [enhanced oil recovery....]

If you can't understand the definition of water flooding, especially the part at the beginning where it says "enhanced oil recovery", then look at Schlumberger's in depth definition of enhanced oil recovery, where Schlumberger includes a technical paper on the enhanced oil recovery project at Burghan, a large clastic reservoir in KSA.

And what is the nature of the enhanced oil recovery project discussed in the Schlumberger Technical paper?

Why....its a water flooding project.

Imagine that. You've posted more nonsense and been caught out again looking silly.

technical_papers/enhanced_oil_recovery

Cheers!

[tita]

water flood which is not EOR.

I can't tell if you are a liar or just very stupid. You claim to have a background in the oil biz, but then you post silliness like this.

I'm not an expert... So I wouldn't call someone stupid if I don't know what I'm talking about. Especially on vocabulary questions or the jargon of oil techniques.

Water flooding is not considered as an EOR, but as a secondary recovery technique (along with gas injection) to increase pressure in the reservoir... The technique is old (back to 19th century), and began to be widely used in the US oil fields in the 40's. Ghawar began gas injection in 1958, and water injection in 1964.

EOR refer to recovery techniques not only to increase pressure, but also displace oil in the reservoir. Chemical flooding, CO2 injection and thermal recovery. This was tertiary recovery, but are now used even in early stages.

I just read a little bit more the interesting glossary of Schlumberger than you did:
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Te ... overy.aspx
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Te ... overy.aspx
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Te ... overy.aspx

This is also clearly explained in wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraction_of_petroleum

Ghawar has only quite recently began to use EOR, with a carbon capture and storage technology, to inject CO2 in its fields (2014). A short history of Ghawar development:
https://www.epmag.com/ghawar-arabian-gr ... 846#p=full

Still, we don't have much information of the success of this CO2 project... Information from KSA is sparse.

So... rockdoc is neither a liar or a stupid. He just knows a bit more than we do. He doesn't know everything of course, but before pointing him at fault, be sure to look deep.

[EdwinSm]

Implodes ???? Reading the link from the first post is seems more like "Fades away".

[Darian S]

Only peakers would ignore the most basic sciences involved in their rush to do the curve fitting thing.

Here's the thing the U.S had peaked, only thing that rescued production was adequate prices allowing for thousands upon thousands of new shale wells to be brought quickly online.

Here you're commenting a drop from 100% of Initial production to 4.5% in short order.

Fortunately, if you examine the information provided by the USGS, the drop doesn't look to be 1% of original output across the time span, call it 4.5% after 10 years.

With seemingly no way to bring thousands upon thousands of additional new wells online decade after decade, how can you expect anything other than a U.S drop in production?

Did the shale play merely result in a second short lasting peak? Or do you have reason to believe the U.S has some means of continuing to increase production further, and compensate for the loss in production of both the old and newer wells?

[asg70]

The middle-way, so to speak, is that we've kicked the can down the road.

My frustration is that there is a reluctance on the part of peakers to let go of the panic of 2008. If they can finally concede to the can kicking then maybe the discussion can finally...FINALLY shift to guestimating how LONG we've kicked the can down the road and what the world may be like when we really do fall off the plateau, considering that the world of the 2020s is going to have things that we didn't have back in 2008, such as EVs just starting to creep up the S-curve.

The polarization continues because the peak-oil remnant just continues to live in the past, refusing to concede, shifting goalposts, coming up with various apologias or new theories (ETP being the most popular). All this does is make what's left of the peak oil camp completely irrelevant to passers-by because they are just so damn out-of-touch with current realities. ASPO shutting down should be a wake-up call, but apparently not. The faithful are going down the whole flat-earth direction at this point.

The trend of late to pick a handful of old threads from over a decade ago and bump them also continues to paint a portrait of a group of people who are hopelessly trapped in the past, continuing to fight a battle that's already been lost, sort of like old bitter Confederate soldiers sitting on their porch shaking their fists at carpetbaggers.

Move on, people. Then maybe the ad homming will stop and some semblance of real discussion will resume.

[AdamB]

Only peakers would ignore the most basic sciences involved in their rush to do the curve fitting thing.

Here's the thing the U.S had peaked, only thing that rescued production was adequate prices allowing for thousands upon thousands of new shale wells to be brought quickly online.

"Only thing" otherwise known as "the thing that did it". The USGS was evaluating resource plays back in the mid-90's, you figure the peak oilers just forgot about them? Didn't notice their production history going back through 3 different centuries now?

Would you call that ignorant, they just didn't know any geology? Or is it more like they were deceived, by the precision of there equations when fitting declines to time series data, said precision replacing the need to understand the interplay between geology and economics?

Here you're commenting a drop from 100% of Initial production to 4.5% in short order.

Fortunately, if you examine the information provided by the USGS, the drop doesn't look to be 1% of original output across the time span, call it 4.5% after 10 years.

What do you mean, short order? I was doing shale decline curves and reserves for publicly traded companies before Colin Campbell declared global peak oil in 1990. They have always had a steeper profile than a discrete reservoir. There is no surprise here, in discrete reservoir, or resource plays. I just pointed out, specifically, the time frame involved, and an answer derived from scientists who have forgotten more about this than any modern peaker.

With seemingly no way to bring thousands upon thousands of additional new wells online decade after decade, how can you expect anything other than a U.S drop in production?

No one disputes peaks within cycles of development. Around here, we have even discussed the sine wave of oil production being far more representative than this nonsense single peak stuff. And yes, go study the areas that the EIA applies the Oil and Gas Supply Module to, and you will see that there is area to drill, they have quantified it, and if the price is right, any model worth its salt will go drill wells. Exactly what happened, and has continued to happen. There will come a time when there are fewer areas. And then we can begin to talk about the next cycles of development.

Did the shale play merely result in a second short lasting peak?

Could be. The EIA had called for a near term peak just a year or three ago, and then decline. And then those pesky oil companies went and kept doing better, found more, and presto! More US peak oil. And now the EIA reflects that type of success in their supply inputs, adds up the resource to reserve conversion rates, and now...peak oil isn't necessarily short lasting.

Or do you have reason to believe the U.S has some means of continuing to increase production further, and compensate for the loss in production of both the old and newer wells?

The EIA does, and they are among the few who did NOT fall for the global peak oil being pimped a decade ago by other big organizations. So that puts them a leg up on those folks who got suckered, so for now, sure, we'll watch their work and see which way they jump. Certainly no one takes peak oilers seriously on this topic now, and with the IEA having fallen for global peak in 2006, they are on the "suspicious" list until further notice.

[dissident]

In a lot of the rabid denial of peak oil, the fact that discoveries have faded to well below replacement levels is systematically ignored. This allows for the wiggle room to spout BS.

T = Integral[(R(t)/E(t))dt]

T is the global lifetime of oil production, R(t) is the reservoir oil amount (accessible), E(t) is the global extraction rate. The instantaneous time is t. We have E(t) plateaued with a gradual increase. R(t) additions are falling off exponentially from the 1960s at the same time as previously discovered reservoirs are being depleted at increasing rates. A better of way to look at this integral is to split:

T = T_1 + T_2 where

T_1 = Integ[(R(t=t_now)/E(t))dt]

T_2 = Integ[((R(t)-R(t_now))/E(t))dt]

So the lifespan associated with current reserves is reduced by the future reservoir deficit, T_2 will become negative in the near future and the amplitude into the negative direction will rapidly increase. It seems like a lot people think that T_1 is the only thing that matters and make the wrong conclusion about the lifetime of BAU. It is shorter than you think.

[rockdoc123]

So the lifespan associated with current reserves is reduced by the future reservoir deficit, T_2 will become negative in the near future and the amplitude into the negative direction will rapidly increase. It seems like a lot people think that T_1 is the only thing that matters and make the wrong conclusion about the lifetime of BAU. It is shorter than you think.

Good lord, Captain obvious or what? This is not the issue, of course if you have A amount of oil and don't replace A amount of oil when you have produced A amount of oil it is all gone. That doesn't require calculus.

The issue is and has always been knowing exactly how much oil has been found. What is reported by IHS Energy, BP in their annual survey, Wood Mackenzie etc is Proven Reserves. Occasionally you will see mention of original oil in place in some discoveries but generally minimal and especially so for the past couple of decades where it is frowned upon by SEC, TSX, LSE etc. This is why we see in the US over the past 5 years the top 50 companies have replaced their corporate production by ~150% on a rolling 12 month average. That is also why the reserve life of various countries as calculated by BP has not decreased over the past decade. IT is all about the movement of Probable and Possible Reserves to a Proven category and the movement of Contingent Resources to one of the Reserve categories and eventually Proven Producing. Reserve growth is also something that you can't easily get your arms around.

So until someone can identify exactly how much technically producible hydrocarbons (irrespective of price) exist around the world then any discussion regarding replacement by new discoveries is interesting but incomplete and hence wrong.

[rockdoc123]

I can't tell if you are a liar or just very stupid. You claim to have a background in the oil biz, but then you post silliness like this.

Have you ever heard of the oil service company called Schlumberger? They are the largest and perhaps the most respected oil service company in the world. If you don't know who they are then I suggest you google them up before posting any more silliness.

Schlumberger specifically defines water flooding as enhanced oil recovery. The term "enhanced oil recovery" is right there in the Schlumberger definition of water flooding. Check it out. The definition begins.... Terms: waterflooding [enhanced oil recovery....]

If you can't understand the definition of water flooding, especially the part at the beginning where it says "enhanced oil recovery", then look at Schlumberger's in depth definition of enhanced oil recovery, where Schlumberger includes a technical paper on the enhanced oil recovery project at Burghan, a large clastic reservoir in KSA.

Hey dipshit….you might actually want to reference the Schlumberger definition instead of the preamble which is meaningless.

1. n. [Enhanced Oil Recovery]
An oil recovery enhancement method using sophisticated techniques that alter the original properties of oil. Once ranked as a third stage of oil recovery that was carried out after secondary recovery, the techniques employed during enhanced oil recovery can actually be initiated at any time during the productive life of an oil reservoir. Its purpose is not only to restore formation pressure, but also to improve oil displacement or fluid flow in the reservoir. The three major types of enhanced oil recovery operations are chemical flooding (alkaline flooding or micellar-polymer flooding), miscible displacement (carbon dioxide [CO2] injection or hydrocarbon injection), and thermal recovery (steamflood or in-situ combustion). The optimal application of each type depends on reservoir temperature, pressure, depth, net pay, permeability, residual oil and water saturations, porosity and fluid properties such as oil API gravity and viscosity. Enhanced oil recovery is also known as improved oil recovery or tertiary recovery and it is abbreviated as EOR.

http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/en/Terms/e/enhanced_oil_recovery.aspx

I have explained this previously to Pstar who apparently has your own level of knowledge of the oil and gas industry...i.e. Nada.

So sorry, waterflooding is not EOR which has also been called Tertiary recovery, it is secondary recovery at best and often is implemented when a field is started up if it doesn't have any natural pressure support.

As to Saudi Arabia I also described in detail what is happening there. It is a pilot project for CO2 injection (not water) with the dual intent of looking at carbon sequestration and improved recovery. It has not been going on for decades, it was started up a couple of years ago and it only entails a few wells, although Aramco has high hopes for further rollout.

Amazing how people who seemingly know nothing about a topic have no problem weighing in and pontificating.

[Darian S]

no one disputes peaks within cycles of development. Around here, we have even discussed the sine wave of oil production being far more representative than this nonsense single peak stuff. And yes, go study the areas that the EIA applies the Oil and Gas Supply Module to, and you will see that there is area to drill, they have quantified it, and if the price is right, any model worth its salt will go drill wells. Exactly what happened, and has continued to happen. There will come a time when there are fewer areas. And then we can begin to talk about the next cycles of development.

So you claim that just as much production as the recent U.S. total shale play can again be brought online after the current production drops? And not just one cycle but multiple such cycles lie in the future?

The EIA does, and they are among the few who did NOT fall for the global peak oil being pimped a decade ago by other big organizations. So that puts them a leg up on those folks who got suckered, so for now, sure, we'll watch their work and see which way they jump. Certainly no one takes peak oilers seriously on this topic now, and with the IEA having fallen for global peak in 2006, they are on the "suspicious" list until further notice.

Hmmm, seems to me like the can was kicked. The easiest and most profitables spots were drilled, and I've not heard of equally as large available reserves for the U.S to allow for multiple such cycles. Do you claim the IEA believes there are multiple large fields left untapped allowing for multiple cycles of further future shale plays?

So until someone can identify exactly how much technically producible hydrocarbons (irrespective of price) exist around the world then any discussion regarding replacement by new discoveries is interesting but incomplete and hence wrong.

It's not just technically producible, but at what rate too and EROEI. If we ignore prices and EROEI the vast majority can likely be recovered if you go through enough lengths. But there comes a point were it may be easier to manufacture than to get the last drops out. Also it is not guaranteed that technological improvement will allow for adequate rate of extraction of the latter remaining resources.

Regards existing reserves. Are we sure the powers that be don't have incentives to overstate their existing reserves?

[rockdoc123]

It's not just technically producible, but at what rate too and EROEI. If we ignore prices and EROEI the vast majority can likely be recovered if you go through enough lengths. But there comes a point were it may be easier to manufacture than to get the last drops out. Also it is not guaranteed that technological improvement will allow for adequate rate of extraction of the latter remaining resources.

As has been stated here many times EROEI does not govern decisions made in the oil industry. Before you worry about prices you have to understand how much is technically recoverable. The change in prices affects what is Proven, Probable, Possible and Contingent Resource. Just as we saw a huge uptick in global Proven reserves when oil price first moved up over $100 without new discoveries to justify that increase (it was all lower category Reserves and Resources moving to Proven category) the same will happen as prices move from their lows in 2016 upwards due to rebalancing of the market. There were a lot of Proven reserves in 2014 which were downgraded to Probable and Possible as price dropped, those will be reinstated through time. The bottom line is that you can't talk about ultimate depletion without actually knowing how much is there. As global supply drops price will have to rise even if there are alternatives for transportation.

Regards existing reserves. Are we sure the powers that be don't have incentives to overstate their existing reserve

All publicly traded companies are required to have a substantial portion of their reserves audited by an independent third party each year. Even Saudi Arabia has now undergone this process as a consequence of the IPO. Any incentive to lie about Proven reserves (in the US this is all that is reported and generally so elsewhere) is offset by the potential penalties if caught. This has been discussed at length elsewhere on this site.