Rembrandt,

Thanks again for your efforts producing a quality 28 page report including 129 charts!

From your Chart 112, do you think that Canada's crude oil production, including oil sands, has passed peak in Aug 2007?

According to the EIA, Canada's crude, condensate and oil sands production in 2007 was 2.616 mbd; 2008, 2.596 mbd; and 2009 YTD Mar, 2.642 mbd. The peak month so far is Aug 2007 at 2.795 mbd.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t11a.xls

Colin Campbell's forecast, from his Dec 2004 newsletter, is shown in the chart below. He shows a peak of just over 3 mbd in about 2020. However, the delays and suspensions of oil sands projects might mean that the peak passed in Aug 2007.

http://www.energiekrise.de/e/aspo_news/aspo/newsletter048.pdf

The June 2009 report from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers shows a forecast of over 4 mbd by 2025 but if further oil sands growth does not occur then Canadian oil production may struggle to exceed 3 mbd.

http://www.capp.ca/getdoc.aspx?DocId=152951

Here's a few forecast charts updated for last week's energy reports from the EIA, IEA and OPEC.

Assuming that a slight demand growth occurs, the long term oil price trend remains upward shown by the dashed green line below.

The largest part of world liquids supply is crude, condensate and oil sands production. The Jun 2009 estimate is 71.3 mbd which has increased slightly from the previous estimate because OPEC has increased production slightly.

A significant part of world crude, condensate and oil sands production comes from about 90 non OPEC countries. These countries are not subject to production quotas and although oil prices more than tripled from 2003 to mid 2008, production declined at about 0.2 mbd per year. Cumulative declines from Russia, the North Sea and Mexico will be a key factor in accelerating the non OPEC production decline rate to an estimated 1.4 mbd per year starting from Dec 2008.

The production declines in the above two charts are supported by the downward trend in capacity additions to 2012 based on data from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_Megaprojects which has been updated for the recent IEA G8 report detailing 2.0 mbd of suspended project capacity and a further 4.2 mbd of project capacity delayed by at least 18 months.
http://www.g8energy2009.it/pdf/IEA_Paper_for%20G8-Impact_of_the_crisis_o...

Non OPEC capacity additions also show a downward trend to 2012.

For more information on world oil forecasts, please read my post last month

World Oil Production Forecast - Update May 2009
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5395

Yes, thanks, Rembrandt.

And especially thanks for putting the crude oil charts toward the top (we are not, after all, "The Liquids Drum"). They are dramatic. How much of the drop in OPEC production is really voluntary, do you think?

I Can't see the right side data

fantastic report

what we really need is an equivalent report for Nat Gas

.pdf isn't loading for me. "They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes." - Alaska Senator/convicted felon Ted Stevens.

Brazil liquids at Canada levels is an eye opener-it implies that ethanol properly sourced has a bright future.

Does anyone else see anything strange in Charts 69, 70? These charts are for Yemen. In chart 69 it looks like production peaked in 2000-2003 at 0.45 mbpd decreasing to 0.33 mbpd in 2007. Chart 70 for Yemen has a plateau between 0.70-0.80 mbpd for 2005-2009.

Thanks Rembrandt! Your PDF is spectacular. Recommended.

Huge drop in the consumption of oil!

Actually, based on total liquids, the average so far of 09 (84.13 mbd) vs. the average consumed for 07 & 08 (86 mbd) is only down 2.17%. For all the banter about demand destruction, it seems like a small percentage drop. I wonder if some other factor besides reduced consumption was the cause of the big drop off in price. Maybe it was more like the world economy suddenly dropped like a stone, that scared oil investors away?

I posted this here since I think its more relevant to this thread.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5499#comment-511506

Below a new publication by the Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group:

"How reasonable are oil production scenarios from public agencies?"

http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/MDRM_article.pdf

http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/MDRM_article.pdf

I think one problem with this approach is for long lived fields redeveloped using advancing technology the real R/P ratio is probably a lot lower then most people estimate.

In a sense older fields get pulled forward in time with R declining and P increasing until they hit the techical maximum.

Think of it like the reverse of refinancing a home loan you have paid down for ten years for a new 30 year loan. You get a lower payment but your pay off moved out 10 more years as the loan term restarts.

So as fields are redeveloped your effectively resetting the R/P ratio to the maximum of the ability of the technology at that time.
Couple this with discovery going well into the past and the dominate factor in future production is redevelopment of existing production using newer technology.

What this tends to do is effectively bring the start production dates of fields closer together in time if you treat redevelopment as a sort of restart of production. In a sense as the region ages its production profile approaches that of one giant field.

The US in a sense dodged the bullet on this by allowing private individuals to develop marginally productive and often financially negative oil resources. We often develop oil resources that eventually turn out to be net money losers. Same with NG for that matter. As and example California's gold production is still not zero even though its over 100 years since the first gold rush.

Also in the US you have ever more marginal production sold to smaller player willing to work them for marginal and in many cases no net profit. This works well in the US as the smaller players often tap newer technology that would the larger players where unwilling to use on the smaller field. In effect in the US what you get is a field depleted at a fairly fixed technical level till well after alternative approaches are viable just not cost effective for the larger firms. So far in the US this system has managed to allow a slow decline but if you dig its more correct to see it as one that actually delays implementation of technology advances in many fields the exact opposite of my thesis for the world. The North Sea which is a tougher environment is also starting to follow this pattern with smaller players finding it profitable to redevelop fields played out at a certain technical level. Its not clear that this will be as successful in the North Sea as it was in the more benign US environment.

Going back out to the world which is in general not positioned to do basially mom and pop extraction what you see are more sweeping redevelopment of larger fields to get production up. The poster child is of course Cantarell.

I'm arguing that world oil production actually has approached the R/P(min)

So R/P(min) for a region ==> R/P(min) for the fields.

If you look on page 14 you see a nice indication that asymetric decline is possible.

With my approach a slow regional decline as a region ages is not a good thing.

This is demonstrated on page 15 :)

Given my assertions then one would expect global production to effectively follow field production which is a long platuae period to 70% depletion then a steep drop. Given overall world production is heavily influenced by political events and financial factors until right at the end its much better to consider global production capacity not actual production values. Indeed world production capacity has held remarkably constant for about 30 years. If demand and political issues where correct the world could have readily produced at its current rate at any point in time in the last 30-35 years. Above ground factors serve to delay the onset of peak but also work to allow more advanced technology to be used when they are resolved.

However even for the US one day the party ends - the recent high oil prices revitalized the US oil industry and the spurt of redevelopment effectively reset the US clock on last time.

The sort of maximum R/P is fairly well known and its about 10 i.e reserves are depleted in ten years.
Also on a field level production generally declines when your 70% depleted. This suggests that the world
is 70% depleted of reserves accessible with our current financial and technical models. Given that technology
is now well advanced we would expect that it is now a limiting factor.

Looking at the world production graph in my opinion we hit R/P 10 for the world in 2003-2004.
This implies rapid decline 6-7 years later. If we have another massive wave of redevelopment then it will reset the R/P clock back to 10 but at I estimate 70-50% of our current production. I don't think this last wave is relevant for our civilization and probably improbable for political and financial reasons.

Certainly more reserves exist but your on a treadmill at the global level I seriously doubt you get the fairly smooth decline you have seen in the US with R/P staying at 10 for so long instead your now in the field case.
The US itself should also finally be toast.

Whats funny is on page 20 of the paper they test my assertion i.e that a R/P of proved or running R/P of 10 equations to a R/P fixed of 70 and they get EXACTLY what I'm suggesting i.e production collapses immediately.

However I prefer to explain it as 1250-1500GB of what I call fast oil or good oil. This is the amount of oil we know came from valid original discoveries not questionable reserve expansion.

It gives the same anwser i.e R=1250 R/P(min)=30 ==> R=1248 R/P(min) = 70 + 800GB R/P(min) 30

Thus the mistake they are making are there are really to major post peak periods then end of "fast" oil and high production rates which hits with a bang collapsing production and technically but politically questionable extraction of the remaining 500-800GB of marginal and very expensive oil bearing formation I'd not call them reserves in the real sense.

The result is shown in figure 10 and summarized in table 2. The projected peak dates
range from 2007 to 2054. Assuming EUR = 2248 Gb and (R/P)min = 70, production collapses
immediately which indicates that at least one of the parameters is incorrect. The significant
result, however, is that sustained production growth to 2030 requires either that the (R/P)min is 30
together with an EUR of at least 3003 Gb, or else that the EUR must be 3896 Gb. It thus appears
likely that crude oil production will start to decline before 2030. An imminent peak in production
cannot be ruled out.

Theres my prediction basically that Red line :)

Current article link below about comments from James Mulva, CEO of Conoco Phillips, regarding the dangers of regulating carbon, which he says will reduce investment, and in turn dangerously reduce supply.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090617/pl_afp/useconomyenergywarmingoil

"Washington's apparent belief that we can choose between renewable energy and fossil fuels is mistaken," he said.

What a paradox we find ourselves in. If we restrict fossil fuel usage to reduce our carbon footprint, we slow the economy and reduce incentives to invest, which will reduce supply and cause harm to the economy. If we use as much fossil fuels as we want, we may cause climate change to spin out of control.

"A find mess you've gotten us into Ollie!"

Backed into a corner, from which there is no clear or easy path out.