Gordon Brown talks bollocks on Peak Oil

[eatyourveg]

No I didnt graduate as a petroleum engineer but do have a pretty good understanding of the field.

From what I see here and elsewhere and why I wanted to contribute was that easily accessable information that anybody can understand is being miss interpreted and missrepresented to give people false hopes.

In my opinion we are on the early stages of the oil decline and there will be some fundemental changes in the world on a time scale shorter than people expect. There has been lots of debate on the possibilities of things happening but my feeling is that we will expericance things we least expect.

I suspect people in the know already have an idea of the problems the world will encounter and are planning pre-emptive action. Iraq might have already been the first step.

The least likely scenario is that things will continue as they are. That is the most scariest thing of all.

Cheers

I don't think there is any doubt here as to what Iraq was/is all about Ziggy, and most have I think, an understanding of what a 'black swan' event means.

[RenewableCandy]

What this web site has lacked until now has been an industry insider who was an engineer with hard data from the work face.

Oh now wait one minute. I've been registered since December 07, and I've got quite a bit more than "hard data" in this particular game.

Yes but you don't count because you never tell us anything definite. Turing test and all that

[snow hope]

Hey Ziggy, thanks for your input. It certainly seems somewhat diametrically opposite to the other person on this forum involved in the industry who spends his time poo-pooing the whole concept of Peak Oil and its occurrence around now, see his signature..... yawn.

I would be interested to hear more of your thoughts and conclusions based on your 28 years of well testing.

[ziggy12345]

Some say the peak in production we are seeing is a result of the constrictions of the distribution infrastructure. If you look at just the middle east the distribution network is full and at break point. To meet demand over the next 15 years it will need an inventsment of 300 trillion dollars (yes trillion!).

If you equate that to what would be required for a new field that is somewhere in the deep ocean you can see the point people are trying to make.

[RGR]

No I didn't graduate as a petroleum engineer but do have a pretty good understanding of the field.

[RGR]

[quote="RenewableCandy"]

[RGR]

I would be interested to hear more of your thoughts and conclusions based on your 28 years of well testing.

[RGR]

. To meet demand over the next 15 years it will need an inventsment of 300 trillion dollars (yes trillion!).

[eatyourveg]

RGR, you give the impression of someone desperately treading water.

Also, good to see your return to form, for a moment back there, you were bordering on being obsequious. Go steady.

[RGR]

Also, good to see your return to form, for a moment back there, you were bordering on being obsequious. Go steady.

[biffvernon]

( say Horner plot a few times, THATS always an icebreaking topic among the amateurs )

For those who don't know what a Horner plot is and are too impatient to wait for RGR's helpful explanation, this page may be the most illuminating.

[ziggy12345]

Lets take one thing at a time then as it get complicated.

Can you show me where is the data for the last decent oil decline? I'm not talking about problems with supply due to an imposed embargo, I mean a shortage due to supply shortfalls?

Cheers

[careful_eugene]

( say Horner plot a few times, THATS always an icebreaking topic among the amateurs )

For those who don't know what a Horner plot is and are too impatient to wait for RGR's helpful explanation, this page may be the most illuminating.

I can't see anything on this page other than some squares and some photos.

[ziggy12345]

Try this

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YW1M ... #PPA471,M1

Very basically when drilling into a new reservoir you release some pressure (flow the well) then shut it in and measure the build up of pressure against time. Plot the log of (Tp+dT)/dT against pressure and you can extend the straight line section to (Tp+dT)/dT = 1 and it will give you the initial pressure of the reservoir given infinite boundary.

So knowing the pressure plus the volume of the reservoir, the permeability, porosity, drive mechanism...etc..etc... you can calculate reserves. Use this info with a recovery program (that normally gets forgotten about 2 mins after you open the wells) and you get the estimates recoverable reserves

So you list those reserves on the stock market and the shares go up. It takes a few hundred million dollars to get those numbers so look how attractive the following scenario is

A company invents a new method of increasing the % recovery form your existing field. Implementation only costs a few hundred million but even before you put it into action you can list your assets as increased by a huge factor. Companies during the 90s made a fortune by re evaluation reserves for companies so they could re-list them on the stock market

Shell got found out and had to downgrade their assets 27% remember that? All other oil companies saw the resulting slide in their shares and didn't own up.

Cheers

[biffvernon]

See. I told you this page was more illuminating. But your computer needs to display the Chinese character set.