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How much oil remains for the world to produce? Comparing assessment methods, and separating fact from fiction

November 8, 2022

How much oil remains for the world to produce? Comparing assessment methods, and separating fact from fiction

Abstract

This paper assesses how much oil remains to be produced, and whether this poses a significant constraint to global development. We describe the different categories of oil and related liquid fuels, and show that public-domain by-country and global proved (1P) oil reserves data, such as from the EIA or BP Statistical Review, are very misleading and should not be used. Better data are oil consultancy proved-plus-probable (2P) reserves. These data are generally backdated, i.e. with later changes in a field’s estimated volume being attributed to the date of field discovery. Even some of these data, we suggest, need reduction by some 300 Gb for probable overstatement of Middle East OPEC reserves, and likewise by 100 Gb for overstatement of FSU reserves. The statistic that best assesses ‘how much oil is left to produce’ is a region’s estimated ultimately recoverable resource (URR) for each of its various categories of oil, from which production to-date needs to be subtracted. We use Hubbert linearization to estimate the global URR for four aggregate classes of oil, and show that these range from 2500 Gb for conventional oil to 5000 Gb for ‘all-liquids’. Subtracting oil produced to-date gives estimates of global reserves of conventional oil at about half the EIA estimate. We then use our estimated URR values, combined with the observation that oil production in a region usually reaches one or more maxima when roughly half its URR has been produced, to forecast the expected dates of global resource-limited production maxima of these classes of oil. These dates range from 2019 (i.e., already past) for conventional oil to around 2040 for ‘all-liquids’. These oil production maxima are likely to have significant economic, political and sustainability consequences…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

How much oil remains for the world to produce? Comparing assessment methods, and separating fact from fiction

July 16, 2022

How much oil remains for the world to produce? Comparing assessment methods, and separating fact from fiction

Abstract

This paper assesses how much oil remains to be produced, and whether this poses a significant constraint to global development. We describe the different categories of oil and related liquid fuels, and show that public-domain by-country and global proved (1P) oil reserves data, such as from the EIA or BP Statistical Review, are very misleading and should not be used. Better data are oil consultancy proved-plus-probable (2P) reserves. These data are generally backdated, i.e. with later changes in a field’s estimated volume being attributed to the date of field discovery. Even some of these data, we suggest, need reduction by some 300 Gb for probable overstatement of Middle East OPEC reserves, and likewise by 100 Gb for overstatement of FSU reserves. The statistic that best assesses ‘how much oil is left to produce’ is a region’s estimated ultimately recoverable resource (URR) for each of its various categories of oil, from which production to-date needs to be subtracted. We use Hubbert linearization to estimate the global URR for four aggregate classes of oil, and show that these range from 2500 Gb for conventional oil to 5000 Gb for ‘all-liquids’. Subtracting oil produced to-date gives estimates of global reserves of conventional oil at about half the EIA estimate. We then use our estimated URR values, combined with the observation that oil production in a region usually reaches one or more maxima when roughly half its URR has been produced, to forecast the expected dates of global resource-limited production maxima of these classes of oil. These dates range from 2019 (i.e., already past) for conventional oil to around 2040 for ‘all-liquids’. These oil production maxima are likely to have significant economic, political and sustainability consequences…

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

Bethany McLean: Saudi America

March 3, 2019

Bethany McLean: Saudi America

The truth about fracking & how it’s changing the world by Adam TaggartFriday, March 1, 2019, 3:37 PM

For years now we’ve been covering the false promise of the American shale oil “miracle”.

Yes, it has extracted a lot more oil out of American soil that most thought possible. But at an economic loss. And at great environmental cost.

If the shale drilling companies can’t make any profit, either when oil prices are high or low — why are we still pursuing shale deposits so aggressively?

To shed further light on this paradox, this week we welcome journalist Bethany McLean to the program. McLean is editor-at-large at Fortune Magazine and a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and Slate magazines. She is also author of the excellent book: Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking And How It’s Changing The World.

McLean warns that the hype, the hucksterism, and the geological shortcomings of the deposits themselves, are setting up both investors and American society for tremendous disappointment:

The real catalyst of the shale revolution was the Great Financial Crisis and the era of unprecedentedly-low interest rates that followed.

And that had two effects. One was that it made debt cheap. So these companies that are heavily dependent on being able to raise capital could raise debt at low prices. And without that, I’m not sure there would’ve been a shale revolution because they needed such immense amounts of capital to fund their drilling.

But it had a second impact, which is that when pension funds were no longer able to earn a return in traditional fixed income markets, they’ve increasingly put their money into riskier assets like hedge funds that invest in credit and private equity firms. Those entities, in turn, have increasingly invested in shale.

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

Art Berman: Exposing The False Promise Of Shale Oil

January 16, 2019

Art Berman: Exposing The False Promise Of Shale Oil

Estimates of recoverable oil are proving wildly wrong
Art Berman, geological consultant with over 37 years experience in petroleum exploration and production, returns to the podcast this week to debunk much of the hopium currently surrounding America’s shale oil output.

Because the US is pinning huge hopes on its shale oil “revolution”, so much depends on that story being right. Here’s the narrative right now:

  • The US, is the new Saudi Arabia
  • It’s the swing producer when it comes to influencing the price of oil
  • The US will be able to increase oil production for decades to come
  • New technology is unlocking more oil shale supply all the time

But what if there’s evidence that runs counter to all of that?

We’re going to be taking a little victory lap on this week’s podcast because The Wall Street Journal has finally admitted that shale oil wells are not producing as much as the companies operating them touted they would produce — which is what we’ve been saying for years here at PeakProsperity.com, largely because we closely follow Art’s work:

The Wall Street Journal did some research and they got the general point that the wells are not as good as advertised.

But what they missed is just how much farther off many of these reserves are than even the discounted reserves that they’ve reported.

Bottom line: if the understatement is only 10%, that’s a rounding error and it’s not that much of an issue to the average person. But I’ve been trying for a decade to get the number that I independently develop to get anywhere close to the published numbers. In most cases, I can only get near 60% or 70% of them. So, the gap, I think is much more substantial.

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

Petroleum Junkies of the World, Unite!

September 7, 2018

Petroleum Junkies of the World, Unite!

Photo Source Fibonacci Blue | CC BY 2.0

I’m a fossil fuel junkie. I drive a car and use electricity. My computer, TV, telephone, refrigerator, stove, lights, water, and sewage all run on carbon-based energy.[1] All of the materials used to build my house and furniture were made with hydrocarbons. The wood, sheetrock, cement, metals, glass, wiring, pvc pipes, and other plastics were all manufactured with carboniferous energy. My high-energy lifestyle mainlines fossil fuels.

The petroleum coursing through the veins of our global economy allows me to do miraculous things. If I have the money, I can hop on a plane and be scuba diving in the Caribbean in a matter of hours. I can pick up a phone and talk to people anywhere in the world. I can buy coffee shipped from Kenya, tea from India, mangos from Mexico, rice from Thailand, and bananas from Ecuador anytime I want for a few dollars. I never have to do the backbreaking work of growing my own fruits, grains, and vegetables or raising my own livestock. I can light and heat my home, cook my food, do my laundry, and take a hot shower without ever having to collect and chop wood, haul buckets of water, or even start a fire. My family can toss their luggage into the car and journey hundreds of miles in a few hours for the cost of a tank of gas. Even with a host of servants and slaves the great kings of old could not have imagined doing many of the amazing things I can with do with the energy of fossil fuels. Power like this is addicting.

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

Why The Coming Oil Crunch Will Shock The World

July 7, 2018

Anton Balazh/Shutterstock

Why The Coming Oil Crunch Will Shock The World

And why we need a new energy strategy — fast.

My years working in corporate strategy taught me that every strategic framework, no matter how complex (some I worked on were hundreds of pages long), boils down to just two things:

  1. Where do you want to go? (Vision)
  2. How are you going to get there? (Resources)

Vision is the easier one by far. You just dream up a grand idea about where you want the company to be at some target future date, Yes, there’s work in assuring that everybody on the management team truly shares and believes in the vision, but that’s a pretty stratightforward sales job for the CEO.

By the way, this same process applies at the individual level, too, for anyone who wants to achieve a major goal by some point in the future. The easy part of the strategy is deciding you want to be thinner, healthier, richer, or more famous.

But the much harder part, for companies and individuals alike, is figuring out ‘How to get there’. There are always fewer resources than one would prefer.

Corporate strategists always wish for more employees to implement the vision, with better training with better skills. Budgets and useful data are always scarcer than desired, as well.

Similar constraints apply to us individuals. Who couldn’t use more motivation, time and money to pursue their goals?

Put together, the right Vision coupled to a reasonably mapped set of Resources can deliver amazing results. Think of the Apollo Moon missions. You have to know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there to succeed. That’s pretty straightforward, right?

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

Art Berman: Like It Or Not, The Future Remains All About Oil

January 24, 2018

Vladimir Yudin | Dreamstime.com

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Art Berman: Like It Or Not, The Future Remains All About Oil

And competition for it is heating up 

Art Berman, 40-year veteran in the petroleum production industry and respected geological consultant, returns to the podcast this week to talk about oil.

After the price of oil fell from its previous $100+/bbl highs to under $30/bbl in 2015, many declared dead the concerns raised by peak oil theorists. Headlines selling the “shale miracle” have sought to convince us that the US will one day eclipse Saudi Arabia in oil production. In short: cheap, plentiful oil is here to stay.

How likely is this?

Not at all, warns Berman. World demand for oil shows no signs of abating while the outlook for future production looks increasingly scant. And the competition among nations for this “master resource” will be much more intense in future decades than we’ve been used to:

Since the 1980s, we simply have not been replacing reserves with new discoveries. So how does that work? Well, obviously, we’ve got a lot of oil on production and in reserves, so we’re essentially drawing down our savings account if you want to think about it that way. You can do that for a long time if you’ve got a whole lot of money in your savings account, and we as a planet do. But you can’t do it forever.

Eventually, you either have to stop spending as much so you don’t draw down your savings, or you need to put some money back in the account. And it doesn’t seem like we’re doing much of either, and haven’t been doing much of either for a long time. So the concern is tremendous, at least, in my estimation(…)

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

The Great Oil Swindle

December 16, 2017

silentera.com

The Great Oil Swindle

Is leading us to destruction

When it comes to the story we’re being told about America’s rosy oil prospects, we’re being swindled.

At its core, the swindle is this: The shale industry’s oil production forecasts are vastly overstated.

Swindle:  Noun  – A fraudulent scheme or action.

And the swindle is not just affecting the US.  It’s badly distorted everything from current geopolitics to future oil forecasts.

The false conclusions the world is drawing as a result of the self-deception and outright lies we’re being told is putting our future prosperity in major jeopardy. Policy makers and ordinary citizens alike have been misled, and everyone — everyone — is unprepared for the inevitable and massive coming oil price shock.

An Oil Price Spike Would Burst The ‘Everything Bubble’

Our thesis at Peak Prosperity is that the world’s equity and bond markets are enormous financial bubbles in search of a pin. Sadly, history shows there’s nothing quite as sharp and terminal to these sorts of bubbles as a rapid spike in the price of oil.

And we see a huge price spike on the way.

As a reminder, bubbles exist when asset prices rise beyond what incomes can sustain.  Greece is a prime recent example. In 2008 when the price of oil spiked to  $147/bbl, Greece could no longer afford imported oil. But oil is a necessity so it was bought anyway, their national balances of payments were stressed to the point that they were exposed as insolvent and then their debt bubble promptly and predictably popped.   The rest is history.  Greece is now a nation of ruins and their economy might as well be displayed alongside the Acropolis.

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

If The Saudi Arabia Situation Doesn’t Worry You, You’re Not Paying Attention

November 11, 2017

If The Saudi Arabia Situation Doesn’t Worry You, You’re Not Paying Attention

A key geopolitical axis is swiftly shifting

While turbulent during the best of times, gigantic waves of change are now sweeping across the Middle East. The magnitude is such that the impact on the global price of oil, as well as world markets, is likely to be enormous.

A dramatic geo-political realignment by Saudi Arabia is in full swing this month. It’s upending many decades of established strategic relationships among the world’s superpowers and, in particular, is throwing the Middle East into turmoil.

So much is currently in flux, especially in Saudi Arabia, that nearly anything can happen next. Which is precisely why this volatile situation should command our focused attention at this time.

The main elements currently in play are these:

  • A sudden and intense purging of powerful Saudi insiders (arrests, deaths, & asset seizures)
  • Huge changes in domestic policy and strategy
  • A shift away from the US in all respects (politically, financially and militarily)
  • Deepening ties to China
  • A surprising turn towards Russia (economically and militarily)
  • Increasing cooperation and alignment with Israel (the enemy of my enemy is my friend?)

Taken together, this is tectonic change happening at blazing speed.

That it’s receiving too little attention in the US press given the implications, is a tip off as to just how big a deal this is — as we’re all familiar by now with how the greater the actual relevance and importance of a development, the less press coverage it receives. This is not a direct conspiracy; it’s just what happens when your press becomes an organ of the state and other powerful interests. Like a dog trained with daily rewards and punishments, after a while the press needs no further instruction on the house rules.

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

WAR & PETROLEUM RESERVES

February 22, 2015

WAR & PETROLEUM RESERVES

In the interest of analytical balance, we would do well to consider the possibility of war strategies when it comes to the global stockpiling of petroleum reserves.  In the years leading up to the German invasion of Poland, the world witnessed dramatic decreases in the price of oil as well as massive increases in petroleum inventories, especially as the Texas fields began to produce.

These shifts in the global oil markets ran parallel to the deflation which had begun in October, 1929, and as such, we can see the same pattern repeating today as oil prices collapse, inventories are growing, and world wide deflation is deepening.

The United States and China are both increasing their Global Strategic Petroleum Reserves, with stockpiling taking place in Cushing, Oklahoma, and in provinces throughout China.  The promoted script is that America is seeking energy independence and China is taking advantage of low oil prices to increase stockpiles, as they are an energy importer.

But other countries around the world are stockpiling oil and petroleum products as well, from the construction of massive storage tanks in Nigeria, to hundreds of oil tanker ships full of crude floating of coastlines.  Crude and petroleum product stockpiles are increasing to record levels.

 

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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