Re: OT: Here're the savings from Arctic drilling Ãf 75 cents a barrel
- From: r15757@xxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 31 May 2008 14:57:07 -0700 (PDT)
On May 31, 9:12 am, Ron Ruff <rruffrr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If production truly is struggling (and I don't believe it is) then it
will be very temporary. What is limiting the ability to extract it
fast enough?
To repeat myself yet again: the limits on the ability to extract it
fast enough are 1) the physical limits of oil extraction 2) dearth of
new discovery 3) ongoing massive and irreversible declines from
existing fields, 4) increasing consumption/decreasing exports of oil
producing nations and 5) demand increases from developing nations.
Production of every oil field on the planet follows a bell curve. It
goes up, it peaks, it comes down. That's how it works. As time goes on
field pressurization drops and water cut increases; it takes more
energy to get less and less oil. When most of the largest fields of
the world are in the decline phase it puts a huge damper on the
ability of oil producers to meet growing demand with new sources. New
sources produce far less oil for the same dollar/unit of energy than
they did in the past. Why? Because the easy oil has already been found
and pumped and burned, and is not being replaced by other sources of
easy oil. That's because there isn't any. Believing otherwise is
simply delusional.
There is not another Saudi Arabia out there, hiding, just waiting to
be found. Even if 'they' were to locate a new million-barrel-per-day-
producer like Cantarell, which seems exceedingly unlikely at this
point, 'they' have to find the equivalent of about 4 of these every
year just to make up for existing declines. Try to get at least
slightly realistic about this.
Isn't it merely a matter of drilling more wells and using
advanced technology?
Nooo!!!!! Oil isn't produced by the abstraction of economics. Drilling
more wells and advanced technology allows oil producers to more fully
develop a field and extract more of what's there, but it doesn't
change the basic reality that oil production from any single reservoir
follows a bell curve. Advancing extraction tech hastens the peak and
accelerates the decline rate as it produces more recoverable barrels.
The only reason that a few of the big oil fields in the world do not
seem to be in decline yet is because they were so huge in the first
place, or development of them was delayed. But depletion will be
reality for every field in production, if production continues.
Read this on the development of Saudi Aqbaiq field:
http://tinyurl.com/6op9em
Also scroll down to see an animation of drilling over decades in a
portion of Ghawar, to see how vastly intensified drilling effort often
corresponds to flat or decreasing production.
They always have. ...
What is this 'always have?' That is more of a religious belief than
anything based on observable facts. The fuel oil industry is only 150
years old. There is no 'always' about it. Your religious belief about
the magical powers of oil producers has no grasp of the historical big
picture. Let's look at a small slice of it again: Between 1950 and
1970 ten fields that would produce at least 600k barrels per day were
discovered. Since 1970, despite vast increases in exploration, only
three such fields have been discovered. I believe each of these was
discovered in the 1970s. Of fields producing over one million barrels
per day (only a handful of these have ever been found) the youngest on
the planet is Cantarell, Mex., discovered in 1976. Cantarell, a
critical source of supply to the US/world, is now in precipitous
decline, its depletion about to take Mexico over the cliff to importer
status. IOW, there will soon be no more oil available for export from
the youngest former one-million-plus bpd field in the world. You're
talking religious belief and all I'm asking is for you to do the math.
The oil is not 'running out.' That's a ridiculous canard. Oil reserves
will never 'run out.' What's running out is oil available for export
to oil-importing countries and ability to match global demand. Fact is
oil producers are producing more oil today than has every been
produced before. The problem is it's not enough, and few with any
knowledge of the subject believe that 'they' will be able to squeeze
out more than a few million barrels more per day than they are right
now. Meanwhile, as if that weren't enough, the reality of depletion of
giant fields and slowing discovery rates means that the world is
poised to start heading down the backside of the global *production*
curve. So, Houston, we have a few large problems overlaid on each
other to create one big bad hairy problem, Houston.
.
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