I woke up to the Teletext headlines of a "huge oil find in the Gulf of Mexico" today. How many gigabarrels of oil would that be then? Then you look a bit closer...
According to John Kilduff, an analyst quoted by the AFP news agency, the new oil field could produce 400,000 barrels for 20 years - even at its lowest capacity.
The world consumed 82,000,000 barrels of oil a day in 2005 (BP) so 400,000 works out at around half of 1%: enough oil to supply the world for about 7 minutes (if my maths are correct). And that's ignoring rises in consumption over those 20 years (it would take several years for the field to come online).
It just shows how desperate we are for oil that even a small discovery like this is classed as "huge".
Ah come on... 400,000bpd is a huge field! If this turns out to be as good as they expect this is a major find.
It was expected though. Deep water is the last play. Regular oil is already in decline, it's the deep water that might keep the all liquids peak away until 2010.
The BBC programme on peak oil had this to say:
"The reason we're in ultra-deep water is that that's the last frontier," says Mr Anderson.
I've heard a figure of 15 billion barrels which would be one of the largest finds in decades. However the trouble is that they are still going to have to find another 15 billion this year just to tread water and then they are going to have to do it all over again next year (plus a little bit more) and again and again every year. Just how many multi billion barrel fields can they find out there?
The problem is not that there isn't a lot of oil in the ground, it's our ridiculous (and ever increasing) consumption. Sadly it doesn't seem that we are going to stop guzzling this stuff until it runs dry.
The most complete exposition of a social myth comes when the myth itself is waning (Robert M MacIver 1947)
The question that springs to my mind is if the US has just found a 15billion barrel field in one of the most mature oil regions of the world, how much is there elsewhere?
Were we not led to believe that you make the biggest discoveries first? How did this one go unnoticed?
So how lng before this elephant comes on stream, given that it's flows and not reserves that are crucial ?
Will it allow the USA to delay it's imminent gas problem ?
Will this find be hyped so much in the states that the average consumer
is even less aware of depletion as a problem - time to get another SUV ?
I suspect Kunstler might be a bit dismissive come Monday
This one also looks to be one of the deepest fields ever found. It's 7000 feet of water to the sea bed and then another 20,000 feet to the field. It just goes to show what kind of effort oil companies are having to expend to find new big discoveries, it's as far down as the average commercial airliner is up in the sky, about 5 miles!!! The mind boggles at how they are going to draw all that up a 5 mile long tube.
Another point is that at that depth surely it's going to be gas, not oil?
The most complete exposition of a social myth comes when the myth itself is waning (Robert M MacIver 1947)
frankd2689 wrote:So how lng before this elephant comes on stream, given that it's flows and not reserves that are crucial ?
Will it allow the USA to delay it's imminent gas problem ?
Will this find be hyped so much in the states that the average consumer
is even less aware of depletion as a problem - time to get another SUV ?
I suspect Kunstler might be a bit dismissive come Monday
You're right Frank - this find changes nothing. The peak is now "undelayable" , simply because of the timescales involved to produce from these new finds.
However - with finds like this - maybe the depletion picture maybe slower rather than a massive decline. Lets face the latter is what most fear the most!
Totally_Baffled wrote:The question that springs to my mind is if the US has just found a 15billion barrel field in one of the most mature oil regions of the world, how much is there elsewhere?
Were we not led to believe that you make the biggest discoveries first? How did this one go unnoticed?
This isn't "one of the most mature oil regions of the world". In fact the opposite, it's a new frontier, the last frontier! It's also wholly expected and factored in, ASPO are expecting some 140GB of new discovery over the next few decades, much of it deep water just like this.
Totally_Baffled wrote:However - with finds like this - maybe the depletion picture maybe slower rather than a massive decline. Lets face the latter is what most fear the most!
Finds like this are factored into ASPO's depletion picture - however that says very little about what the actual extraction rates will be in the decades after peak, it's just the geological potential.
The oil field is located 435 km (270 miles) south-west of New Orleans and 282 km (175 miles) offshore.
Isn't that plop in the middle of where Katrina tracked from the East in 2005? They could get the rigs up and ready to pump oil and then have them destroyed in an instant. Or does it not work quite like that?
What Chevron actually said is that they estimate that the Gulf of Mexico's lower-tertiary formations hold more than 3 billion barrels' and perhaps as much as 15 billion barrels' worth of oil and gas reserves.
biffvernon wrote:That 15 billion figure seems to be quoted a lot.
What Chevron actually said is that they estimate that the Gulf of Mexico's lower-tertiary formations hold more than 3 billion barrels' and perhaps as much as 15 billion barrels' worth of oil and gas reserves.
Which is not quite the same thing.
Three companies led by US-based Chevron say they have found an oil field under the Gulf of Mexico that could boost US reserves by more than 50%.
This isn't "one of the most mature oil regions of the world". In fact the opposite, it's a new frontier, the last frontier! It's also wholly expected and factored in, ASPO are expecting some 140GB of new discovery over the next few decades, much of it deep water just like this.
Actually you are right. they have factored it in. - lets hope ASPO are proved to be too "conservative"(again) with the reserve figure!
If its a whole new frontier - I wonder how they came to 140gb? considering this an estimate for a substantial % of the earths surface! (and that potentially over 10% has been found in one discovery!)
Huge ultra-deep water finds are going to make reserve recovery ratios look great, but production speeds are another matter. It remains to be seen how fast we can get the stuff out of the ground at that depth.
Tess wrote:Huge ultra-deep water finds are going to make reserve recovery ratios look great, but production speeds are another matter. It remains to be seen how fast we can get the stuff out of the ground at that depth.
Absolutely - but its fast production rates that has got us into this mess.
If we have a massive reserve base BUT a "bottleneck" of slower extraction rates, then maybe there is more time for a transition?
Lets face it , the economic fall out caused by PO is going to happen whatever they find in deep water - but if there is a long drawn period of at least some oil supply then maybe we can avoid chaos?
