Oil Shock Models with Different Ultimately Recoverable Resources of Crude plus Condensate (3100 Gb to 3700 Gb)

D Coyne 340 Comments

This is a guest post by Dennis Coyne

The views expressed are those of Dennis Coyne and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ron Patterson.

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The post that follows relies heavily on the previous work of both Paul Pukite (aka Webhubbletelescope) and Jean Laherrere and I thank them both for sharing their knowledge, any mistakes are my responsibility.

In a previous post I presented a simplified Oil Shock model that closely followed a 2013 estimate of World C+C Ultimately Recoverable Resources (URR) by Jean Laherrere of 2700 Gb, where 2200 Gb was from crude plus condensate less extra heavy oil (C+C-XH) and 500 Gb was from extra heavy (XH) oil resources in the Canadian and Venezuelan oil sands.

In the analysis here I use the Hubbert Linearization (HL) method to estimate World C+C-XH URR to be about 2500 Gb. The creaming curve method preferred by Jean Laherrere suggests the lower URR of 2200 Gb, if we assume only 200 Gb of future reserve growth and oil discovery.

Previously, I have shown that US oil reserve growth (of proved plus probable reserves) was 63% from 1980 to 2005. If we assume all of the 200 Gb of reserves added to the URR=2200 Gb model are from oil discoveries and that in a URR=2500 Gb, oil discoveries are also 200 Gb, then 300 Gb of reserve growth would be needed over all future years (we will use 90 years to 2100) or about 35% reserve growth on the 850 Gb of 2P (proved plus probable) reserves in 2010. I conclude that a URR of 2500 Gb for C+C-XH is quite conservative.

A problem with the Hubbert Linearization method is that there is a tendency to underestimate URR.

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The EIA’s Questionable Numbers

Ron Patterson 509 Comments

The EIA’s, on June 30th, published its Petroleum Supply Monthly. I Think their numbers are just way too high. I compared them with the EIA’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report. The chart below shows the Results.

EIA Post 1

I averaged the weekly numbers and converted them to monthly data. They were pretty close for the first three months of 2014 but then they begin to diverge. Of course they were much closer earlier but in the Petroleum Supply Monthly has, over several months, been revised upward. The Weekly Petroleum Status Report is never revised.

In April, the Petroleum Supply Monthly shows US C+C production 322,000 barrels per day above the weekly average of the Weekly Petroleum Status Report.

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Bakken by County

Ron Patterson 277 Comments

North Dakota publishes monthly ND Historical Barrels of Oil Produced by County. This data however does not include confidential wells. But they do estimate, by county, their confidential well production here: Oil and Gas Production Report

All charts are in barrels per day and are only for the last 16 months in order to get a better and expanded view of what each county is doing.

North Dakota Expanded

First a sixteen month view of all North Dakota production. North Dakota production, in April, stood at  1,168,636 bpd. That is 17,631 bpd below their production last September, seven months previous. North Dakota production is down 59,385 bpd since the high reached in December.

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Are We Headed For Global Warming Collapse?

Ron Patterson 549 Comments

This is the first of several posts I will do on Global Collapse. I am not saying, right here anyway, that civilization as we know it will collapse, but I am asking the question: “Can collapse be avoided?” This post will deal with global warming and the associated climate change.

Collapse Post 2

Right now CO2 is higher than it has been in over 20 million years. But it has been higher, a lot higher.

The chart below was published in the Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World 2015 and the source of their data was Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Collapse Post 11

What this chart clearly shows is that global warming, so far, is primarily a northern hemisphere phenomenon and mostly above 60 degrees latitude.

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