Quick question about Oil production

[Tajir]

I didn't know which section this belonged but I had a yearning question.

I hear stats that say the average oil-producing state usually is measured in hundreds of thousands or millions of barrels per day.

Now, say a country has 5 billion barrels of oil, which is quite a large sum and qualifies it as a major producing state. If they are producing 500,000 barrels of oil a day for however many years, wouldn't they run out in just a few years.

Lets take this for example: Norway currently has 6.6 billion barrels of oil and produces 2 million barrels a day. At that rate they should be out of oil in just a decade if drilling started today instead of a while back; but at any right if they started more than a decade ago with that same amount they'd be out of oil today.

Also, Ghana was estimated at having around 1 billion barrels of oil and is expected to produce 200,000 barrels per day. At that rate, they should be out in less than a decade.

Am I seeing it wrong? My assumption is that whatever is produced is used and exported immediately. Unless of course they just sit on the final product for some time.

[Floris V van Holland]

yes you are right ! and that is why people are getting nervous.

you need not fear losing mobility though we have coal enough for 500 years more and make synthetic fuel of that.
but fusion needs to be hurried up with fast.
.

[Tajir]

So my overly simplistic view on oil production was right? That people are actually drawing ridiculous amounts of oil on a regular basis compared to the size of their reserves? That a nation with 6 billion barrels that draws 2 million barrels a day will be out of oil in less than a decade...

Interesting.

[Floris V van Holland]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves

seams we'll have enough for the next 40 years or so even with growing demand. thought it was less actually, more like 20 years.
.

[conon394]

So my overly simplistic view on oil production was right? That people are actually drawing ridiculous amounts of oil on a regular basis compared to the size of their reserves? That a nation with 6 billion barrels that draws 2 million barrels a day will be out of oil in less than a decade...

Not quite since you look to be using only proven reserves.

Take Norway it has smaller projects farther North already underay that will small amounts of proven reserve, but has for political resons been slow really push development of oil in the far North/Barents Sea. Conservative guesstimates suggest 1-2 billion barrels of oil reserve could be added (but the uncertainty range is huge and there is stuff not counted becuse of various disputes between Norway and everyone else with any claim to the Barents Sea.).

seams we'll have enough for the next 40 years or so even with growing demand. thought it was less actually, more like 20 years.

It will probably last a lot longer, cheap easy oil is getting scarce, I mean even if Norway does hit the jackpot in the Barents and triples its proven reserve, its going to expensive to recover. If you look at a lot other new reserves they are increasing deep water or technical driven rexamination of old sites -> oil will get more and more expensive thus it use will tail off. I mean for example if you were buying a house on the East coast where heating oil is still a common means of heat, I think with recent price trends you might just roll in a home improvement away from that now where as 20 years ago not.

[Floris V van Holland]

well i don't consider oil sands of canada easy oil but do expect enormous rise in car ownership.
but i'm biased on that.

[removeduser_4536284751384]

Apart from coal are there any other obvious sources of hydrogen and carbon for the synthetic production of hydrocarbons?

By the time coal runs out in 250 years we will probably have developed nuclear transmutation to such an extent that we can convert any elements into any other elements on demand.

[John Doe]

Apart from coal are there any other obvious sources of hydrogen and carbon for the synthetic production of hydrocarbons?

Iceland uses geothermic to great extend, energy is so cheap that they even grow banana indoor.

@OP: there is a lot of documentation on the web, just google "peak oil", whether it's a conspiracy theory or not, I don't know.

As for oil reserve, I think they are calculated on what is economically viable to extract, as pointed by conon394. I think it was Shell that reduced it's own estimate of oil in the early 00's because they miscalculated the price of extraction, but the oil is still there in the ground and now the price has increased they can restate their reserve. The same goes with tar sand, if oil stays above $70ish (IIRC) then it's worth exploiting it and counts as proven reserve. Also there is always technological advances, that allows to recover a greater % of an oilfield at low cost. And last but not least is the quality of crude oil, with Brent (north sea) and West texas being one of the easiest (and cheapest) grade to refine. I know that the saudi oil is mainly an heavy oil, and most european raffineries are not capable of tranforming it, so even if it's cheaper to pump out of the ground, the petrol refined from it might be more expansive.

[Floris V van Holland]

mmmmm those reserves are way smaller then i thought. shows you you can learn a lot from a forum .

[GrnEyedDvl]

You are also only reading reports about oil that can currently be drilled. There's literally billions of gallons here in the US that cant be touched.

Colorado and Utah have as much oil as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Kuwait, Libya, Angola, Algeria, Indonesia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates combined.

That's not science fiction. Trapped in limestone up to 200 feet thick in the two Rocky Mountain states is enough so-called shale oil to rival OPEC and supply the U.S. for a century.

Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., the two biggest U.S. energy companies, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are spending $100 million a year testing new methods to separate the oil from the stone for as little as $30 a barrel. A growing number of industry executives and analysts say new technology and persistently high prices make the idea feasible.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/06/news...tune/index.htm

[chamaeleo]

You are also only reading reports about oil that can currently be drilled. There's literally billions of gallons here in the US that cant be touched.



http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/06/news...tune/index.htm

...there is a reason folks use kitty-litter (aka ground-up, dehydrated shale) to clean up spilt oil. Where fluid retention is concerned, clay materials are simply unsurpassed. I'd be VERY surprised if Shell were indeed getting close to a cost effective solution.

[GrnEyedDvl]

...there is a reason folks use kitty-litter (aka ground-up, dehydrated shale) to clean up spilt oil. Where fluid retention is concerned, clay materials are simply unsurpassed. I'd be VERY surprised if Shell were indeed getting close to a cost effective solution.

The term cost-effective is variable, its tied to the price of traditional oil. When traditional oil is $50 a barrel, then no its not cost effective to get oil from shale. However when traditional oil is over $80 a barrel, then its cheaper to get oil from shale than it is to import it. We just dont because oil production is not "politically correct." They are currently trying to force all kinds of crap onto us here related to energy, solar power taxes, etc etc.


From a CNN report last month:

The cost to recover this oil was around $90-$95 a barrel three or four years ago. Now it costs about $60-$75 a barrel, thanks to advances in technology and an increase in production.

[chamaeleo]

The term cost-effective is variable, its tied to the price of traditional oil. When traditional oil is $50 a barrel, then no its not cost effective to get oil from shale. However when traditional oil is over $80 a barrel, then its cheaper to get oil from shale than it is to import it.

Well, yeah, I assume that goes without saying.

We just dont because oil production is not "politically correct."

If you've ever witnessed mountaintop removal firsthand, or spoken with a local whose entire town suffers from lung illnesses, or even driven past 200' tall piles of spent shale through a town encrusted in black dust...you'd never have dared to invoke that tired, old "politically correct"-in-quotes line. And while the adverse effects of ex-situ processing are brutally obvious to even the most insensitive observer, in-situ may be even worse: as injecting hot fluids in close proximity to aquifers (as intact oil-shales form barriers to groundwater migration) is a recipe for long-term regional disaster, whose mitigation will be expensive and/or simply impossible.

They are currently trying to force all kinds of crap onto us here related to energy, solar power taxes, etc etc.

As for tax crap: we might achieve the same end by simply reducing government domestic oil subsidies, leveling the playing field, allowing for true competition between all energy schemes. Welfare is bad, right? Why should our taxes be used to artificially depress certain commodity prices...to me, this seems economically unsustainable and quite anti-free market in spirit.

Let's face it: you don't want to pay the actual price of oil in terms of neither dollars nor human health, economic, and environmental degradation. You'd rather force citizens to foot industry's bill: diverting their taxes, sacrificing quality of (and actual) lives, losing land usability, and watching helplessly as potential tourists hold their noses while driving through as quickly as the devastated roads (potholed by heavy equipment) will allow.

Shrouding the legitimate complaints of folks whose lives have been directly compromised as merely 'PC' anti-oil propoganda...such spin only serves to legitimize a massive social injustice.

[Floris V van Holland]

saw a docu once on the techniques for such extraction and shell was very good in finding the stuff in the first place but they never mentioned reserves in those numbers.

i understand reasons to keep the remaining the liquid oil as a strategic reserve, but there is no reason at all to not start exploiting that lot.
bit strange to not start extraction.

[GrnEyedDvl]

bit strange to not start extraction.

No money to trade for carbon credits...

Think how easy it would have been to cap a leak on something like this as compared to a few thousand feet under water.

[Floris V van Holland]

hahaha good point!!
no need at all.
just stop providing pressure and heat . it will stop instantly.

[Denny Crane!]

Syriana:

But what do you need a financial advisor for? Twenty years ago you had the highest Gross National Product in the world, now you're tied with Albania. Your second largest export is secondhand goods, closely followed by dates which you're losing five cents a pound on... You know what the business community thinks of you? They think that a hundred years ago you were living in tents out here in the desert chopping each other's heads off and that's where you'll be in another hundred years

This quite well turned phrase is quite relevant to Saudi Arabia and a number of other places. They are distinctly unattractive places to do business in and they are not investing in anything else except a small minorities decadence. Once the oil runs out they are screwed and you are right it is happening pretty quickly in some places, easy oil isn't lasting.

[Elfdude]

You have to take into account oil imports too.

For example norway produces 2.35 million bbl/day, they consume 204,100 bbl/day, they export 2.061 million bbl/day and they import 107,500 bbl a day.

Now to figure out when they'll run out you'll have to figure out what their proven reserves are (this is your minimum) then find out what the unproven estimates are (this is your maximum). It's a stretch to assume we've found all of the oil we'll ever find but there's also different sources of oil that we normally wouldn't consider and don't include in our proven reserves. Such as very oily sand which potentially has trillions of barrels of oil in it were we able to effectively harvest it.

[John Doe]

Prospecting new oil field is a huge investment and it takes years before the first barel is pumped out of the ground, so oil price need to stay high for the long term. And oil company don't have incentive to augment significantly oil production: more supply means lower price, and it lowers return on the investment made to open the new oil field in the first place.

[GrnEyedDvl]

The oil companies are itching to get at this oil, the hold up is not on their end.