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2005-2018 Conventional crude production on a bumpy plateau – with a little help from Iraq

2005-2018 Conventional crude production on a bumpy plateau – with a little help from Iraq

This post is an update of a graph done in 2015:

Conventional_oil_plateau_2005_2014
Fig 1: Conventional oil production on bumpy plateau 2005-2014
In http://crudeoilpeak.info/latest-graphs

When adding the new data for 2015-2018 it was discovered that the 1980-2014 data had been changed – mainly increased by up to 1.24 mb/d in 2014 as shown in this graph:

EIA_oil_supplies_stat-changes_2014_in_2018
Fig 2: Total EIA oil supplies were retrospectively changed

When (re-)calculating conventional crude oil production the increase in crude oil (528 kb/d in 2014) matters most so the following graph shows this difference.

EIA_crude_stat-changes_2014_in_2018
Fig 3: Changes in EIA crude oil statistics

US shale oil production

This is unconventional oil as the source rock has low permeability and low porosity and therefore needs to be fracked.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Diesel or no Peak Diesel? The Debate is Ongoing

Peak Diesel or no Peak Diesel? The Debate is Ongoing

In a recent post, Antonio Turiel proposed that the global peak of diesel fuel production was reached three years ago, in 2018. Turiel’s idea is especially interesting since it takes into account the fact that what we call “oil” is actually a wide variety of liquids of different characteristics. The current boom of the extraction of tight oil (known also as “shale oil”) in the United States has avoided, so far, the decline of the total volume of oil produced worldwide (“peak oil”).

Shale oil has changed a lot of things in the oil industry, but it couldn’t avoid the decline of conventional oil. That, in turn, had consequences: shale oil is light oil, not easily converted to the kind of fuel (diesel) which is the most important transportation fuel, nowadays. That seems to have forced the oil industry into converting more and more “heavy” oil into diesel fuel but, even so, diesel fuel is becoming gradually more scarce and more expensive, to the point that its production may have peaked in 2015. In addition, it has created a dearth of heavy oil, the fuel of choice for marine transportation. In short, the famed “peak oil” is arriving not all together, but piecemeal — affecting some kinds of fuels faster than others.

Turiel’s proposal has raised a considerable debate among the experts, with several of them challenging Turiel’s interpretation. Turiel himself and Gail Tverberg (of the “our finite world” blog) discussed the validity of the data and their meaning. Below, I reproduce the exchange with their kind permission. As you will see, the matter is complex and at the present stage it is not possible to arrive at a definitive conclusion. 

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Easy Oil Is Gone So Where Do We Look Now?

The Easy Oil Is Gone So Where Do We Look Now?

In 2008, Canadian economist Jeff Rubin stunned the oil market with a bold prediction: With the world economy growing at 5 percent a year, oil demand would grow with it, outpacing supply, thus lifting the oil price from $147 to over $200 a barrel.

The former chief economist at CIBC World Markets was so convinced of his thesis, he wrote a book about it. “Why the World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller” forecast a sea change in the global economy, all driven by unsustainably high oil prices, where domestic manufacturing is reinvigorated at the expense of seaborne trade and people’s choices become driven by the ever-increasing prices of fossil fuels.

In the book, Rubin dedicates an entire chapter to the changing oil supply picture, with his main argument being that oil companies “have their hands between the cushions” looking for new oil, since all the easily recoverable oil is either gone or continues to be depleted – at the rate of around 6.7% a year (IEA figures). “Even if the depletion rate stops rising, we must find nearly 20 million barrels a day of new production over the next five years simply to keep global production at its current level,” Rubin wrote, adding that the new oil will match the same level of consumption in 2015, as five years earlier in 2010. In other words, new oil supplies can’t keep up with demand.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why we are at Peak Oil Right Now

Why we are at Peak Oil Right Now

In this life nothing is certain. Therefore I am not declaring, absolutely, that we are at peak oil, only that it is a near certainty. But I am putting my reputation on the line in making the claim that the period, September 2014 through August 2015 will be the year of Peak Oil. Below are my reasons for making this claim.

First of all, Peak Oil is not a theory. The claim that Peak Oil is a theory is more than a little absurd. Fossil hydrocarbons were created from buried alga millions of years ago and they are finite in quantity. And as long as we keep extracting them in the millions of barrels per day, it is only common sense that one day we will reach a point where their extraction starts to decline. In fact most countries where oil is extracted are already in decline. So obviously if individual countries can experience peak oil then the world as a whole can also experience peak oil.

All charts below are in thousand barrels per day of Crude + Condensate with the last data point September 2014.

World Less USA & Canada

First I want to deal with the portion of the world that reached peak oil about four years ago, in January 2011. That is everywhere else in the world except the US and Canada. I am not saying that every country outside the US and Canada has reached peak oil, but combined they have reached peak oil.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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