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This data from OPEC's August monthy report doesn't seem to have been picked up by many, I've written about it on my blog.

The key point is that non-OPEC light sweet crude went from 41% of 66 mb/d to 34% of 70 mb/d from 2000 to 2004, a drop of 3.26 mb/d. OPEC added 1 mb/d of light sweet crude over the same period resulting in a global reduction of light sweet crude of over 2mb/d showing that global light sweet crude has peaked and is now in decline.
http://www.vitaltrivia.co.uk/2005/08/26

Is light sweet crude the "the oil" we talk about?

The oil we talk about is made up of a continuum of weights (light, medium, heavy etc) and sulphur content (sweet <0.5% and sour >0.5%). Historically light sweet oil is the most attractive since it's the easiest to handle. However due to depletion it would appear with production of light sweet oil is declining to be replaced with heavy sour oil. Global refinery capacity isn't geared up to handle this higher proportion of heavy sour oil so the price of the light sweet is being bid up.

Aha!

Great info.

Reproduced at EnergyBulletin also, fame at last Chris!

Here's an excellent article on the subject: Sweet and Sour.
Contains some graphs from the EIA about the spread between light sweet and heavy sour.

And further discussed at The Oil Drum

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/8/23/233714/826

Yeah, my article really seems to be doing the rounds!

I'd like to recommend that Econbroswer "Sweet and Sour" article to everyone, it's top notch.

EconB and many in PO might not exactly see eye-to-eye on everything but I would much rather deal with people like that than with the crooked day-dreamers we seem to have by the bucketload.


Chris, any comments on the Oil Drum analysis?

theoildrum wrote: Even if that problem turns out not to be material, there's some danger in assuming from two data points that we know the shape of the curve. Maybe one or other data point was an anomaly. Declaring peak on light sweet crude would be a lot more comfortable with the whole curve before us.

People reading that OilDrum article are well advised to also read the comments on it (after main article) which I initially overlooked but which contain some very useful additional info.

Sure with only two points you can't really say more than that there was less non-OPEC light sweet oil in 2004 than in 2000... but I think averaging production over a whole year and over the whole of non-OPEC territory must get rid of most of the noise in the system. And it's not as if the difference is small, it's a few million barrels per day!

The biggest problem I have is that non-OPEC production is described as 66 and 70 mbpd, when it's generally taken to be more like 50. I don't think it changes the point I'm making since whatever they are including in non-OPEC production they are consistent but I would be nice to know just what they are counting.

Over at TOD they are discussing at length, issues with modeling the world peak-and-decline picture http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/9/11/155142/359

You are all well advised to read that article and the comments (in fact that whole series of articles on modeling and analysis).

In this particular thread tho they raise and issue which I think often gets overlooked - that is, as the cost of producing oil rises, the net energy left for the rest of the world reduces, but when we talk about "Peak Oil" we generally talk about the total numbers produced, not the total numbers that remain for the world to use.

In that article they note that approx 5% of all oil extracted is actually used in the extraction and associated processes.

Further, an approx 7% additional energy (not nesseccarily oil) is used in refining:

"Petroleum refining is the most energy-intensive manufacturing industry in the United States and accounts for about 7.5% of total U.S. energy consumption."

(http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/9/11/155142/359#12)

It strikes me that a key point that often gets minimised or downplayed is what happens to this cost-of-extraction-and-processing numbers as the oil becomes both increasing hard to get and increasingly harder to refine?

Most of us are aware of EROEI and the role this plays in the likes of tar-sands and oil-shale development, but no one seems to have any models or numbers that take this into much account.

If the world produces (lets say) 70mbd in 2015 but the EROEI is much much worse than it is now then the net of that 70mbd could easily be 60 or less, but we don't seem to make that clear in much of the data or models to date - we just say "2015 - 70mbd".

Nor do we clearly show how the increased use of other energy sources (mainly nat gas) interacts in the bigger equation - doubling ca. tar-sands output (for example) might not only leave far less net oil available but also have a significant impact on nat gas demand, with associated interactions (such as using more of another resource, or even using more oil).

So why am I posting this in the "global light-sweet has peaked" thread? Because it seems that "light sweet", coming out of the ground clean and strong and under lots of it's own pressure was in fact "it" in terms of the core, catalytic, energy source that not only powered the "oil age" component of industrialisation but got the west to where we are now and sustained us - everything is downhill from the end of light-sweet, as ever increasing production costs interact with supply shortages (it seems the costs of working with the heavy sours would have had an impact anyway, even if supply of such was still huge).

So, assuming the numbers are correct, we should spare a small but significant thought for the passing of light-sweet's peak as it was this form of energy more than anything else that got us to where we are today.