102 comments on More on the Systematics of Hubbert Linearisation
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It's an interesting approach. One suggestion, you might want to run a HL plot of total North Sea C+C production. My HL plot showed a rock solid pre-peak HL plot, with the production peaking right around 50%.
In regard to Texas, as we previously discussed, the only reasonable estimate of URR, using the pre-peak HL data, came from discounting the "dogleg up" just prior to the peak.
If memory serves, if we discount the dogleg up, it showed a URR estimate of 50 Gb or so. IMO, 66 Gb is the most accurate estimate of URR for Texas. If we used all of the "dogleg up" data, up to 1972, it produced a wildly inaccurate number, something like 110 Gb.
So, based on the Texas model, one could argue that the most accurate estimate of Saudi Arabia's URR comes from discounting the "dogleg up," but with an assumption that the resulting URR estimate will probably be on the low side, which may support your point.
One other interesting point about Saudi Arabia is that, dogleg aside, it showed a very stable linear pattern on the HL plot from about 1983 to 2001 or so.
This was the point of the Texas/Lower 48 article. I argued that the totality of the Texas HL data gave us a good idea of when Texas peaked--somewhere around 55% depleted--and the more stable Saudi data base allowed us to conclude that Saudi Arabia was at a similar stage of depletion, in the vicinity of 55%, in 2005:
Texas and the Lower 48 as a Model for Saudi Arabia and the World (May, 2006)
http://www.energybulletin.net/16459.html
In any case, regions with stable pre-peak HL plots seem to predict post-peak cumulative production quite well, e.g., the Lower 48 and Russia;
In Defense of the Hubbert Linearization Method (June, 2007)
http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/2007/06/in-defense-of-hubbert-linearizat...
The charts produced below are for C+C+NGL from BP data. The UK data contains some production from west of Shetland, the Irish Sea and south England and the Norwegian data contains some production from the mid-Norway, Haltenbanken province. It is a lot of work to back out individual fields from the full data set. The data I plot is dominated by North Sea production and by C+C - but it does contain NGL and data from these peripheral areas.
The first plot is for 5 years prior to the known peak year. Personally I'd be very, very reluctant to use ths data to forecast URR or peak production year.
This second plot brings us up to 2006. The peak year as documented by production data was 2000 when 6.38 mmbpd of C+C+NGL were produced. I'm fairly comfortable using this data now to say that the discovered developed (DD) resources may ultimately produce around 64 Gbs. With 47.8 Gbs already produced that leaves 16.2 Gbs of DD reserves remaining.
I'm also fairly comfortable with the notion that the N Sea has undergone flush production for much of its history. The UK had a spell in the mid-late 80s where some production was suspended and Norway withheld a little production during the late 1990s. But in the grander scheme of things, the North Sea has operated at capacity (Cf = 1).
In the interest of being cautious, I do know that there are a large number of small discoveries waiting to be developed in the UK and Norway (but I have not yet determined how much oil they contain) but will want to add these discovered undeveloped reserves (DU) to the 16.2 GBs. Furthermore, I know for sure there will be future discoveries. Maybe some large ones in Norway. And these too (unknown size) need to be added to any concept of URR for these countries.
The cumulative production to 2000 was 35.5 Gbs. That works out at about 55% of the indicated Qt of 64 Gbs for the DD reserves. This fits well with our notion that peak productin will occur post 50% of Qt owing to modern field developement practices.