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Saturday, September 17, 2005

Oil reserves

It's interesting to consider that any estimate of oil and gas reserves, or any mineral reserves, requires an assumption about the market price for the resource. At $1000 per barrel, it might make economic sense to start pumping oil from under my apartment building.
"The Hubbert curve is often used to illustrate the trend in world oil production. According to Hubbert, the production record of a finite resource obeys a bell-shaped curve which reaches its peak when 50% of the resources have been produced. Pessimistic experts roughly locate this peak around 2010, in other words, tomorrow. Their estimation of ultimate recoverable oil reserves is nonetheless based on a very rigid view of recoverable reserves, both concerning technology as well as scientific knowledge and even the economic environment.

"The concept of reserves is complex and shifting. Any change in the knowledge of the geological data, any technical development, and any change in the economic environment, can significantly alter what is meant by reserves, and accordingly postpone the date at which the production peak could be located. An assessment of conventional oil reserves close to those of the USGS defers the production peak to 2020. On all reservoirs discovered so far, an average increase of 10 percentage points in the recovery rate of resources in place postpones this peak to 2040. The production of the 600 Gb of extra-heavy oil and tar sands discussed earlier defers the arrival of the peak to 2050." [LINK]


posted at 12:33 AM

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