Introduction to Peak Oil

197 Pages·2016·4.114 MB·English

by  R.W. Bentley (auth.)

Lecture Notes in Energy 34
R.W. Bentley
Introduction
to Peak Oil
Lecture Notes in Energy
Volume 34
Series editor
Charles A.S. Hall
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Syracuse, NY, USA
LectureNotesinEnergy(LNE)isaseriesthatreportsonnewdevelopmentsinthe
studyofenergy:fromscienceandengineeringtotheanalysisofenergypolicy.The
series’ scope includes but is not limited to, renewable and green energy, nuclear,
fossil fuels and carbon capture, energy systems, energy storage and harvesting,
batteries and fuel cells, power systems, energy efficiency, energy in buildings,
energy policy, as well as energy-related topics in economics, management and
transportation.BookspublishedinLNEareoriginalandtimelyandbridgebetween
advanced textbooks and the forefront of research. Readers of LNE include
postgraduate students and nonspecialist researchers wishing to gain an accessible
introduction to a field of research as well as professionals and researchers with a
needforanup-to-datereferencebookonawell-definedtopic.Theseriespublishes
single- and multi-authored volumes as well as advanced textbooks. **Indexed in
Scopus and EI Compendex** The Springer Energy board welcomes your book
proposal. Please get in touch with the series via Anthony Doyle, Senior Editor,
Springer ([email protected])
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8874
R.W. Bentley
Introduction to Peak Oil
123
R.W.Bentley
Department ofCybernetics
University of Reading
Reading
UK
ISSN 2195-1284 ISSN 2195-1292 (electronic)
Lecture Notesin Energy
ISBN978-3-319-26370-0 ISBN978-3-319-26372-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26372-4
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2015956376
©SpringerInternationalPublishingSwitzerland2016
Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission
or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilarmethodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
fromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained
hereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.
Printedonacid-freepaper
ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbySpringerNature
TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerInternationalPublishingAGSwitzerland
Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written without the help and wise counsel from
many people over the years, for which I am extraordinarily grateful. In particular
I would like to thank:
In Europe: John Burton, Colin Campbell, Jean Laherrère, George Leckie,
Ken Chew, Francis Harper, Richard Miller, Max Coleman, Bruce Sellwood,
George Whitfield, Peter Dunn, Roger Booth, Chris Skrebowski, David Fleming,
Rayner Mayer, Saad Mannan, Simon Wheeler, Lado Kurdgelashvili, Michael
Smith, David Strahan, Richard Hardman, Jeremy Leggett, Peter Jackson,
SteveSorrell,JamieSpeirs,RichardO’Rourke,HansDuMoulin,MichaelJefferson,
John Busby, Chris Vernon, Godfrey Boyle, Pierre-René Bauquis, Jean Marie
Bourdaire, Fatih Birol, Chris Besson, Peter Gerling, Klaus Illum, Jens Junghans,
Kjell Aleklett, Mikael Höök, Kristofer Jakobsson, Bengt Söderbergh, Rui Rosa,
UgoBardi,SusannePeters,SamCarmalt,JörgSchindler,WernerZittel,Rembrandt
Koppelaar, Pedro Prieto and Luis De Sousa; in Australia and the Far East: Bruce
Robinson,MattMushalik,LianyongFeng,Q.Meng,XuTangandJianliangWang;
and in the USA: Ron Swenson, L. Ivanhoe, Tom Alhbrandt, Gregory Ulmeshek,
Ron Charpentier, Robert Hirsch, Mike Rodgers, David Greene, Ken Deffeyes,
Charles Hall, Steve Andrews, David Lawrence and Hilary Smith.
In addition, I have much appreciated useful conversations with the following,
though often disagreeing with the views expressed: Georges DuPont-Roc,
Peter Davies, David Frowd, Hans Maters, Peter Odell, Alex Kemp, Paul Stevens,
John Chesshire, John Mitchell, Robert Mabro, M. Adelman and Michael Lynch.
Particular thanks go to David Astor and Sarah Astor who, at David Fleming’s
suggestion, employed me at ODAC for a year to study peak oil and who kindly
arranged for the purchase, at Colin Campbell’s suggestion, of the invaluable IHS
EnergyPEPS‘2P’datasetwithoutwhichmuchoftheresearchdescribedherecould
not have been carried out.
Theaboveisonlyaverypartiallistofthosetowhomdebtsareowed,andmany
more people have kindly provided invaluable data and advice over the years; my
apologies to those I have omitted here.
v
vi Acknowledgments
Finally, heartfelt thanks are due to my wife, Yongmei Bentley, who has
tolerantly borne far too many years of ‘oil study’.
Drafts of this book have been reviewed at various stages by Colin Campbell,
Jean Laherrère, Richard Miller, Michael Smith, Steve Andrews, Sam Carmalt and
CharlesHall,for whichmanythanksaredue.Theerrorsthatremainaremine,and
these are almost certainly many. Comments and corrections are therefore very
welcome.
Please note that this is not intended to be a general book on peak oil. Though
noneofthetopicsinvolvedisdifficult,thebookisforthosewhowishtounderstand
thesubjectfromatechnicalpointofview.Thetextcanbesupplementedbyanyof
a number of excellent books on the subject, including Kjell Aleklett’s (2012)
PeekingatPeakOil(whichhasaneweditioncurrentlyinpreparation),andCharles
Hall & Carlos Ramírez-Pascualli’s (2013) The First Half of the Age of Oil.
September 2015 R.W. Bentley
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 The Purpose of this Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 The Importance of Oil, and Hence the Difficulty of Transition. . . . 1
1.3 Conventional Oil Versus Non-conventional Oil. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 Oil Reserves Data: Proved Versus Proved-Plus-Probable. . . . . . . . 5
1.4.1 Proved (‘1P’) Oil Reserves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4.2 Oil Industry Proved-Plus-Probable (‘2P’)
Reserves Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.5 Structure of This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Explaining Peak Oil: What It Is, and Why It Happens . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1 The Production Peak in an Individual Oil Field. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.1 Typical Field Production Profiles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.2 Other Field Production Profiles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.1.3 Examining Field Decline, and Hence Field ‘Ultimate’
by a Linearised Decline Curve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.1.4 Economic Constraints on Raising a Field’s Production
Post-Peak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Conventional Oil Production in a Region (i.e., a Group
of Fields) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2.1 A Simple Model of Oil Discovery and Production
in a Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2.2 Realities Behind This Simple Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.3 Summarising Findings from This Simple Model . . . . . . . . 18
2.3 Predicting the Peak of Conventional Oil Production in a Region
by Combining the ‘Peak at Mid-Point’ Rule with the 2P
Discovery Trend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3.1 The IHS Energy ‘PEPS’ Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3.2 Oil Discovery and Production in Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.3.3 Could There Be a Later Peak? I.e.: Is the 2P Discovery
Trend a Reliable Indicator of URR?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
vii
viii Contents
2.3.4 Oil Discovery and Production in the UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3.5 Expecting (and not Expecting!) the UK Production
Peak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.3.6 Oil Discovery and Production in Norway. . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.3.7 Oil Discovery and Production in Indonesia,
Russia and Iraq. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.3.8 Oil Discovery and Production in Saudi Arabia . . . . . . . . . 37
2.3.9 Summary of Findings on Peak Conventional Oil
Production in Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.4 Peak of Global Conventional Oil Production. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.4.1 IHS Energy Year-2000 Global Discovery
and Production Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.4.2 More Recent Data on Global 2P Oil Discovery
and Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.4.3 Recoverable Volumes Available of Different Types
of Oil as a Function of Cost. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.4.4 Impact of the Price of Oil on the Availability of Oil . . . . . 52
2.4.5 Summary of Global Peak of Conventional Oil . . . . . . . . . 53
2.5 Peak of the Global Production of ‘All-Oil’, and ‘All-Liquids’ . . . . 53
2.6 The Second Half of the Oil Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3 A Brief History of Forecasting Peak Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.1 Forecasts for Conventional Oil Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.1.1 Oil Forecasts Prior to 1956. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.1.2 Hubbert’s Oil Forecasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.1.3 Other ‘Technically-Based’ Forecasts of Peak
Conventional Oil Production, Made from the Early
1970s to Early 1980s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.1.4 Forecasts from Campbell/NPD, 1991; Petroconsultants
(Laherrère, Demaison, Perrodon and Campbell),
1994–1996; and Campbell and Laherrère subsequently. . . . 61
3.1.5 Forecasts Compared in UKERC Global Oil Depletion
Report, 2009. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.1.6 Current Forecasts for Conventional Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.2 Forecasting Production of Non-conventional Oils, & Other
Liquids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4 When Should We Expect the Peak? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.1 Peak in Fields and Regions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.2 The Global Peak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.3 Current Data on Production by Category of Oil. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.4 Conclusions on Expected Dates of Peak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5 Why Has Peak Oil Been so Poorly Understood? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.1 Use of Proved Oil Reserves Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Contents ix
5.2 Reliance on Generally-Available Current Oil Data to Forecast
Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.3 Ignorance of ‘Mid-Point’ Peak of Conventional Oil When
Assessing Future Supply. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.4 Use of URR Estimates that are Substantially Larger than
Extrapolation of Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.5 Approaching the Problem from an ‘Economic’ Viewpoint. . . . . . . 92
5.6 Confusion as to Which Category of Oil was Being Forecast . . . . . 94
5.7 Lack of Analytical Input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6 Caveats and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
6.1 Caveats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
6.2 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Annex 1: Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Annex 2: Oil Reserves Data: 1P Versus 2P. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Annex 3: Notes on Use of IHS Energy ‘PEPS’ By-Country Data. . . . . . 125
Annex 4: Further Aspects of Oil Forecasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Annex 5: Additional Details on Specific Oil Forecasts from
Individuals and Organisations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Annex 6: Peak Oil and Climate Change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Annex 7: Peak Demand. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Annex 8: Peak Gas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Annex 9: Reading University ‘Oil group’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195