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Vogelzang
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Endless Oil?
Now and then I see articles about enhanced oil recovery, off shore drilling, etc. that a lot of people think will help push the peak of oil production
further into the future. This is one of the most optimisitic articles I've seen.
Endless Oil
Technology, politics, and lower demand will yield a bumper crop of crude
By Stanley Reed
Not many people think of the Netherlands as oil country, but a billion-barrel field lies under a nine-mile strip of grazing land along the
Dutch-German border. When oil prices cratered in the 1990s, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS/B) and ExxonMobil (XOM) shut the Schoonebeek field down. Company
executives reckoned that its thick, hard-to-extract crude wasn't worth the trouble, even though only about 25% of Schoonebeek's oil had been produced.
The main evidence of the town's petroleum past was an old-fashioned bobbing oil pump, known as a nodding donkey, which still stands in a parking lot
near a bakery.
Now higher prices and technological advances are spurring a new joint venture of Shell, Exxon, and the Dutch government to pump Schoonebeek's reserves
once more. New wells drilled horizontally are coming in contact with more of the oil. Steam injected into the rock loosens up its molasses-like crude
so it can be brought to the surface more easily. Shell won't say what price it needs to make such efforts profitable, b`ut experts estimate $40 to $50
per barrel will do. At a current price of $80, the field is a clear winner. "We wouldn't do this if the price was really low," says Michael Lander,
the Shell executive running the project. The venture is expected to produce 120 million barrels from the reopened western section of Schoonebeek over
20 years. If another section of the field is developed, the recovery rate—the share of oil that gets pumped out—would approach 50%. The industry
average is 30%-35%.
PRESSURE TO INNOVATE
Schoonebeek will not flood the world with crude. But its success presents a stiff challenge to those who argue that oil production is in irreversible
decline. Consumer demand, technology, and global politics are shifting in a way that could spell a future of oil abundance, not of catastrophic
dearth. As Leonardo Maugeri, a senior executive at Italian oil major ENI (E), puts it: "There will be enough oil for at least 100 years."
Many analysts and industry executives have little doubt that there's plenty of oil in the ground. "Only about 32% of the oil [in reserves] is
produced," says Val Brock, Shell's head of business development for enhanced oil recovery. Shell estimates 300 billion barrels and maybe more might be
squeezed out of existing fields, much of it once thought beyond retrieval. Peter Jackson, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates' London-based
senior director for oil industry activity, has reviewed data from the world's biggest fields. His conclusion: 60% of their reserves remain available.
The fact that there's still oil for the taking is driving Shell and other majors to come up with new technologies, which are expensive to develop but
worth it when crude is riding high. While the price has fallen considerably from the peak of $147 per barrel in 2008, it is still far above what many
oilmen expected a few years ago. "You will see companies going into the deep water, going into the arctic, using the best technology," says Maugeri,
who sees the oil industry as a dynamic system that responds rapidly to changes in the economic and political environment.
Even if the new technologies add just a few percentage points to the recovery rate, such gains add years to global supply and boost the industry's
profits. So the technology of coaxing oil out of the ground is constantly improving. Heating up heavy oil, as at Schoonebeek, is one new trick.
Companies can add heavy polymers to the water they blast into a production site to push more oil out; the polymers add weight to the water and
increase the pressure on deposits. (Shell is trying such technology on the Marmul field in Oman.) Another tactic is to inject soap into the ground to
break the surface tension that makes leftover oil cling to the rock.
Simple methods can help mature oil fields produce more and even uncover bigger reserves than imagined. A study of fields in Indonesia by IHS CERA
found that it wasn't uncommon for them to produce more than double initial estimates. Petroleum engineers help the fields live longer just by drilling
new wells or installing better pumps. "As a field ages, the operators learn more...that allows them to tweak their operations," explains Leta K.
Smith, a Houston-based analyst for IHS CERA.
Sharp falls in production can be arrested. Output at Samotlor, Russia's largest field, was plummeting in the late 1990s. The field's owner, TNK-BP,
formed in 2003, has since managed to boost production by a third. Adjusting the placement of the pumps in the wells yielded big gains, while
three-dimensional seismic technology gave a better glimpse of the oil-bearing structures under the ground.
IRAQ'S WILD CARD
Pumping the oil that's already discovered isn't the whole story. Explorers, sometimes financed by hedge funds and private equity firms, are finding
troves in the deep water off Brazil, West Africa, and even the U.S. At the same time, old and new oil powers—Russia, Brazil, Angola, Nigeria, and
Kazakhstan—are ramping up their capacity with the aid of Total (TOT), ExxonMobil, BP (BP), and other majors. These projects could eventually add 5
million barrels to global daily output.
The most surprising action is unfolding in Iraq, which has just cut deals with ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell as well as with Chinese and Russian
companies. If all these ventures meet their targets, Iraq could produce as much as 12 million barrels a day, putting it in the super league with Saudi
Arabia and Russia. Given the political and logistical obstacles Iraq faces, that seems unrealistic anytime soon. But 6 million barrels a day seems
attainable within 10 to 15 years. That level would turn Iraq into OPEC's No. 2 producer after Saudi Arabia.
Moderating global demand can also stretch the supply of crude. After the oil shocks of the 1970s, efficiency gains and a switch by factories to
natural gas prompted a nearly 10% drop in global oil consumption in the early 1980s.
The price spike of 2008 may lead to similar results. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, an environmental group,
notes that the U.S. car fleet shrank by 4 million in 2009, thanks to scrapping and reduced sales. He expects that shrinkage to continue, reducing the
U.S. fleet by 25 million cars by 2020. He also sees a cultural change occurring in which more people, especially the young, don't see owning a car as
a necessity. "We are now looking at something new, a shift in the way people think about automobiles," he says. "That means less oil use."
U.S. oil consumption dropped by 9% over the last two years. The recession certainly hurt demand, but many analysts think oil use in the West has
peaked and will not rebound to previous levels. The Energy Dept. sees the consumption of oil-based fuel in the U.S. flattening out in the coming
decades. "Are people going to use energy differently in the next [growth] phase?" asks Goran Trapp, head of global oil trading at Morgan Stanley in
London. "If so, the people forecasting [strong] demand increases are going to be surprised."
China is one key to answering Trapp's question. Even as the mainland devours oil and coal, the government is pursuing a green agenda. China has the
world's top solar panel industry, a power plant in Beijng is one of the world's most efficient, and auto emission standards there are now tougher than
those in the U.S. China's official policy mandates that alternate sources support 15% of the country's energy needs by 2020, up from 9% now. So
China's petroleum consumption will keep increasing, but perhaps at not so steep a rate as expected. A nasty oil shock is always possible. But the case
for bountiful oil is strong.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_03/b41630469...
Attachment: Endless Oil.doc (80kB)
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bbartlog
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The author marshalls a host of anecdotes and observations, but never really addresses the main arguments of the peak oilers. Just some observations on
his points:
'The venture is expected to produce 120 million barrels...'
OK. That's 1.5 days global supply. Note that peak oil is not an argument against new sources (or old, previously uneconomical sources) being found;
it just makes a claim about the shape of the overall production curve over time.
'But its success presents a stiff challenge to those who argue that oil production is in irreversible decline'
Does it? How? A stiff challenge would involve marshalling some numbers to suggest that these kinds of sources can be brought into production fast
enough to offset declines from such giant fields as Cantarell. I notice that this article doesn't make any attempt to aggregate any numbers whatever.
That would involve a lot of work. But you know, other people have actually done that work and they seem less optimistic than this guy. I'd like to say
that they came to different conclusions but in fact this guy rather carefully avoids conclusions (other than trivial ones); it's more like he's
evoking an impression of abundance.
'There will be enough oil for at least 100 years'
What does 'enough' mean? Notice this guy never claims that production will exceed the peak of 2005; as far as I can tell all he's saying is that oil
is not going to run out in the next 100 years. He's carefully made a statement that he knows is 'not even wrong'.
'Only about 32% of the oil [in reserves] is produced'
This doesn't address the feasibility or economics (same thing, in the end) of retrieval. I could similarly observe that vast amounts of gold are
contained in seawater, and it would be just as irrelevant.
'You will see companies going into the deep water, going into the arctic, using the best technology'
This implies high costs and therefore high prices. It does nothing to contradict the impression that we are on the back half of the total production
curve.
'Moderating global demand can also stretch the supply of crude.'
I'm sorry; what was the author's claim again? Is it that we won't ever extract the last drop of oil in the ground? That's facile. Is it that aggregate
demand for oil is less than it was previously? He shows that *consumption* dropped following the price increase of the 1970s, but 'demand' is a curve
showing (hypothetical) consumption at different price points; a drop in consumption does not necessarily imply a drop in demand, merely a shift in the
place where supply and demand curves intersect. If the price has just gone up by a large margin, a drop in consumption would logically be ascribed to
reduced supply rather than reduced demand. Really it seems like the author doesn't understand economics well enough to even realize that consumption
and demand are different entities.
'"We are now looking at [...] a shift [...] That means less oil use."'
So if oil is abundant and people just sort of had a cultural moment and decided to use less, we'd expect prices on the floor as the market was glutted
with oil. But of course that isn't what happened; rather, prices sent a signal that we no longer had as much oil (a monstrous one, perhaps the
strongest price signal in human history if we consider aggregate money flows), and this resulted in some reduction of oil consumption as well as
various efforts to extract more of it. However, the size of the price move and the relative lack of elasticity on both the supply and demand side
should not make us optimistic about the ease with which we can either increase supply or change things on the consumption side.
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Vogelzang
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All you have to do is look for articles.
Chevron Engineers Squeeze New Oil From Old Wells
Steam Bath for Aging Field Adds Millions of Barrels of Crude Oil to Reservoir's Output
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870425200457445...
Onboard High-Tech Oil Rig, U.S. Answers to Rising Prices
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/extreme_machines/425...
There's more than twice as much heavy oil as there is conventional oil.
http://www.slb.com/content/services/solutions/reservoir/heav...
http://heavyoilinfo.com/
[Edited on 3-2-2010 by Vogelzang]
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watson.fawkes
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All I had to do was to read Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth
Deffeyes when it first came out in 2001. He talks about all of this. There's nothing here to contradict the basic model of how a
production peak comes about. If you're going to be a contrarian, at least have the good sense to know what it is that you're against.
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bbartlog
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What are these articles supposed to tell me? I'm not even sure we disagree. Here, I'll outline my overall position and you can tell me where you
differ, if at all.
1) I don't believe that world oil production will ever exceed 90 million bpd; rather, it will plateau at its current level and ultimately decrease.
Note I do mean *oil*, I am not talking about natural gas liquids or reprocessed coal.
2) There are other sources of hydrocarbon fuel, notably coal and natural gas, as well as other sources of energy, which can substitute for oil, *but*
3) Major capital investment (alternatively, millions of man-years of work, depending on your preferred perspective on resource allocation) is required
to switch to these other resources. Mobilizing these requires pain in the form of high prices.
4) Thus, hydrocarbon fuel and feedstock will continue to become more expensive (but with a lot of volatility in the price series)
5) Ultimately there must also be a peak in the overall extraction of hydrocarbons from the ground. I don't have a strong opinion on when this peak
will come but I expect to see it within the next twenty years.
Places where I disagree with what I'd call the standard peak oil narrative:
1) I don't expect apocalyptic results (a la Kunstler) in modern capitalist societies. We have flexible mechanisms for allocating scarce resources,
lots of spare labor capacity, the ability to substitute inputs. Cars can run on natural gas, trains can take some of the load from trucks, solar power
can heat more homes. To be fair, our financial system seems to be broken at the moment, and that may make mobilization more difficult.
2) I don't think much of the EROEI model that peak oil advocates use. It takes a static view of the inputs to energy production and assumes that
greater inputs of human labor can't make energy extraction more efficient.
3) Looking at logistic production curves for something like oil in a single country, when there is a large world oil market setting prices, gives a
bad picture of the back half of the production curve. It's giving a picture of how much oil can be produced at some particular price. It doesn't tell
us how much can be extracted with increasing effort (price). In situations where substitution is difficult I would expect the back half of the
production curve to be messy, not a smoothly decreasing curve.
Things I'm not at all sure about : impact on world food production of increased prices for NG (and thus fertilizer); long-term feasibility of nuclear
power substitution; viability of very poor countries and their people in this regime of shifting energy sources.
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Vogelzang
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I read M. King Hubbert's 1956 paper before. He believes there isn't any reason for us to think we're going to be destitute because of depletion of
oil. He discusses coal and nuclear power as possible substitutes. I don't recall anything in his paper about heavy and extra heavy oil which is more
than twice as abundant as conventional oil, or oil sands or oil shale. He doesn't say much about the development of new technologies which we've seen
since 1956, such as horizontal drilling, flooding fields with water and/or CO2, off shore oil drilling, etc.
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watson.fawkes
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Quote: Originally posted by Vogelzang  | | I don't recall anything in his paper about heavy and extra heavy oil which is more than twice as abundant as conventional oil, or oil sands or oil
shale. He doesn't say much about the development of new technologies which we've seen since 1956, such as horizontal drilling, flooding fields with
water and/or CO2, off shore oil drilling, etc. |
Then you want Deffeyes's follow-on book, Beyond Oil,
which does discuss these. Even with CO2, the best of the alternate recovery technologies, you don't get more than one-half ultimate recovery from the
reservoir rock.
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chief
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The oil price didn't go up ==> The Dollar went down ...
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bbartlog
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If you adjust for inflation and smooth out the bumps, the price of oil is pretty flat from 1947 through the mid-1990s, at about $20 per barrel. Now
it's at two to three times that. The devaluation of the dollar does not explain the current price.
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gregxy
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The economic expansion in China and India must be creatating more demand for oil and causing the price to go up.
A side issue, is the predominant theory still that oil came from
dead dinosaurs and plants? Years ago I remember hearing
a theory that oil somehow "distilled" out of the core of
the earth. Given all the places (and depths) that oil has been
found it seems difficult that it had a biological origin.
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unionised
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It seems that nobody has noticed that, if new technology improves extraction efficiency 4 fold then that means the oil will last 4 times as long,
which isn't the same as "endless".
Incidentally there are molecules in crude oil that are leftovers from the decay of biological molecules. Phytane is probably the best known. It's
very difficult to get geology to explain them because these molecules are not particularly "favoured" in any other way.
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bbartlog
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| Quote: | | It seems that nobody has noticed that, if new technology improves extraction efficiency 4 fold then that means the oil will last 4 times as long
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They didn't notice because it isn't true? I'm not even sure what you mean by improving efficiency 4 fold - is this a quadrupling of EROEI? But in any
case, the time to depletion(*) may under some assumptions *decrease* if extraction efficiency increases (see e.g. whale oil). In the case of oil the
impact would have to depend on the size of the reserves that are brought within economic reach by this efficiency increase, which for real-world
technologies depends on the specific improvement. Regardless, even if you have some scalar measure of efficiency that can be quadrupled, the
relationship with time to depletion will not be linear.
(*) - resources do not, in general, become totally depleted, so I'm trying to be generous here and assume you have some particular degree of partial
exhaustion in mind, rather than total exhaustion of all oil.
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chief
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@bbartlog: Inflation --> the official data are false ... !
==> Look at the oil-price in terms of gold: Then it's really quite flat, and you see where the $ actually really is ...
How the US-government fakes the statistics: http://www.shadowstats.com/
[Edited on 12-2-2010 by chief]
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Vogelzang
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Look at the table here:
http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Histor...
It shows the price of oil every year since 1946, both nominal price and inflation adjusted price.
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chief
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Yes ... the official inflation-rate ... ; thats why I said: Look at the oil-price in oz gold:
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/oil-g...
The $ has lost value, but the government doesn't want to admit it: Thats why they say "oil is up" when they should say "$ is down" ...
Also: The peak-oil-swindle last year was just to mask the bailing out of wall-street ... look here:
"More on the real reason behind high oil prices"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=90... 
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bbartlog
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I'm aware that the inflation statistics are questionable due to changes in the methodology. However, the adjustments proposed at shadowstats do not
begin to cover the ramp up in the price of oil in the past ten years or so.
The fact that oil tracks the price of gold fairly well has a lot to do with booms and busts in different investment sectors (in this case
commodities). If the correlation were merely a result of gold reflecting the declining purchasing power of the dollar while behaving as some kind of
ultimate measure of value, we wouldn't have expected the price of gold to fall by 2/3 after its 1980 peak. The dollar certainly didn't deflate by 2/3
in that time.
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chief
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Gold has fall2n 2/3 after 1980 ?
==> Well: Today its above 1000, look here for the charts: http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html (scroll down to see the last 10 years on one picture)
==> In plain numbers it's above any other historical high, $-wise spoken, although the inflation-adjustes price of gold is oftenly calculated to be
at 2300 $/oz and above ...]
Let's face it: If Oil vs. $ is completely flat, as shown in the one link above, then the $ is weak,
==> and we are past "peak $-value" so to speak, not "peak oil" ... 
[Edited on 13-2-2010 by chief]
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Sandmeyer
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| Quote: Originally posted by Vogelzang |
Schoonebeek will not flood the world with crude. But its success presents a stiff challenge to those who argue that oil production is in irreversible
decline. Consumer demand, technology, and global politics are shifting in a way that could spell a future of oil abundance, not of catastrophic
dearth.
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That sort of fanaticism is typical. "Consumer demand, technology, and global politics are shifting in a way that could spell a future of oil
abundance, not of catastrophic dearth." It is astonishing that these business fairy-tales still work.
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chief
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@Sandmeyer: So far the peak-oil-story is a fairy tale ..., as well as the climate-warming and the swine-flu-danger ...
You only need to look a bit behind the surface ... and will probably find yourself that "peak oil" was a staged propaganda-act ... :
==> The oil-price went up because of speculation, not shortage, here again about the mechanism:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=90...
Don't let Wall Street or the government bullshit you ...
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bbartlog
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No doubt the 2008 price spike involved speculation, which is why I didn't include the price high from that year in discussing the long-term trend.
However, the crash following the popping of the bubble did not follow the pattern one would expect of a purely speculative event - the price is still
well above the historical level. Further, if we look at production figures from the EIA, we have to wonder why these prices don't result in more
supply being brought to market. Oil production (in millions of bpd, averaged over each year, though only the first ten months data is available for
2009) is as follows (inflation adjusted, and note that all prices are above the long-term average).
2003: 79.6 $32
2004: 83.1 $43
2005: 84.6 $55
2006: 84.5 $62
2007: 84.4 $67
2008: 85.4 $91
2009: 84.0 $44
Notice that at the beginning, things are still working as we would expect: when the price rises in 2004, more oil is brought to market. The supply
looks a little inelastic (30% price increase gets a 4% output increase) but that would be expected, especially in the short term; it takes a long time
to bring oil production online.
After that, things look decidedly strange. The price continues to rise while supply hardly budges. There is a tiny ~2% output bump in 2008 in response
to the skyrocketing price, but in general world production is flat. The price drop in 2009 is partly due to the end of the speculative bubble, but
also due to worldwide economic contraction. And despite that we're back up over $70 per barrel.
Fundamentally, I don't see why it's so difficult to accept the oil is a finite resource which will have a production curve similar to that for other
finite resources. The only question is whether we have in fact hit the peak, and I think the price/production series from these recent years strongly
suggests that we have. The question of actual impact (whether we will smoothly switch to alternatives, or whether we will have an apocalyptic
transition as suggested by Kunstler, Tainter, or Orlov) is obviously more contentious.
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chief
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You can't look at the years from 2006 on without considering the banking crisis, especially 2008: Banksters went into Oil because $ was weak and
housing broke in too ...
The price in recent years doesn't reflect supply and demand -- the market is under the influence of the major economic crisis ...
and that crisis is just going on, it's _not_ over.
70 $ a barrel _are_ 35 $ from a few years ago -- inflation ever since the gold-standard was abandoned by Nixon (because the french let him actually
deliver the gold ...)
And what has driven inflation in the years from 2001 on ? Right: The US-engagements in Iraq and the entire region there ... : All costs insane amounts
of money, which was just created for the purpose ...
==> Thats how everybody pays for the gulf-wars: By paying higher prices ...
The "peak oil" story, seen in that light, just seems to be a fairy tale ... : The price can be completely explained by politics, no supply-shortage
necessary ...
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Sandmeyer
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| Quote: Originally posted by chief | | @Sandmeyer: So far the peak-oil-story is a fairy tale ..., as well as the climate-warming and the swine-flu-danger ... |
Are saying that oil is an infinite resource? I don't know what you mean by "climate warming" and "swine flu danger", but at least for swine flu I can
speak from experience. I had that flu and luckily I was young and strong enough to survive it (it was hellish), but I can imagine that it can kill you
if your body is weak. The flu is real, and potentially very dangerous, so we should learn to distinguish between existence of a threat and
exploitation of a threat by private power.
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JohnWW
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| Quote: Originally posted by Sandmeyer |
Are saying that oil is an infinite resource? I don't know what you mean by "climate warming" and "swine flu danger", but at least for swine flu I can
speak from experience. I had that flu and luckily I was young and strong enough to survive it (it was hellish), but I can imagine that it can kill you
if your body is weak. The flu is real, and potentially very dangerous, so we should learn to distinguish between existence of a threat and
exploitation of a threat by private power. |
Actually, being young has proven to be a DISADVANTAGE for surviving swine 'flu! Except in a few cases of impaired immune systems, it has infected,
and killed, only children and young to early-middle-aged adults. Almost all the cases and casualties have been in people aged under about 53. This is
because those people who are older are survivors of 'flu epidemics caused by viruses of closely related H1N1 types, particularly the Asian 'flu
epidemic of 1958.
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Sandmeyer
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| Quote: Originally posted by JohnWW |
Actually, being young has proven to be a DISADVANTAGE for surviving swine 'flu! Except in a few cases of impaired immune systems, it has infected, and
killed, only children and young to early-middle-aged adults. Almost all the cases and casualties have been in people aged under about 53. This is
because those people who are older are survivors of 'flu epidemics caused by viruses of closely related H1N1 types, particularly the Asian 'flu
epidemic of 1958. |
According to the mass media, those that died in my country were overwhelmingly patients suffering from some chronic illness of vital organs. Most of
the population got relatively mild symptoms, for example my girlfriend had it too but she barely noticed it. What is sure (at least to my mind) is
that once you get hard hit (for what reasons, who knows?) you better have healthy organs that can take the extreme stress.
What is unique about this illness is that near the peak I suddenly felt normal, and thought: "Ah, it is over, I can go to the lab." Hour later it came
back in a second wave, even worse, high fever, lung pain, then it went like that in waves back and forth, hour after hour, for a week, followed by a
recovery over couple of days. At first, I panicked that I might die if it continues like that, then I gave up worrying, it was extremely peaceful to
stop worrying regardless of the outcome, it was a very interesting experience.
[Edited on 18-2-2010 by Sandmeyer]
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chief
National Hazard
Posts: 630
Registered: 19-7-2007
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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The swine-flu was just a act for the benefit of pharma-companies ...
==> Far less casualties then from traffic-accidents ...
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