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How much crud oil is there to discover in the futur? - The wolf is coming
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How much crude oil is there to discover in the
future?
Kjell Aleklett
Uppsala University
Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group
751 21 Uppsala, Sweden
aleklett@tsl.uu.se
2005-04-04
Discoveries fluctuate from year to year obscuring the long term systematic
trends. But a smoothed curve of discoveries over 10-year intervals gives a
rather smooth curve. The following figure is smoothed such that the average
discovery from 1956 to 1965 is attributed to 1960.
The peak around 1960 stands out clearly. The subsequent downward discovery
slope is more logarithmic than linear, suggesting by extrapolation that
about 134 billion barrels will be found over the next 30 years.
That would not be a bad achievement, being more than double the North Sea,
which is the largest new province found since the Second World War. But it
comes far short of providing sufficient to meet the IEA scenario which visualizes
the consumption of 1000 billion barrels over the next 25 years, even though
some of it may be drawn from reserves left from past discovery. The growing
gap between consumption and discovery looks like the jaws of a hungry wolf.
We may conclude that, yes, "the wolf is coming".
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Year
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Discovery, Gb 1)
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Extrapolation, Gb 2)
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Consumption, Gb 3)
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IEA_forecast, Gb
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1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020
2030
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1,1
1,5
1,8
10,4
25,0
30,5
47,4
32,2
26,4
14,0
9,7
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6,4
4,2
2,8
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1,5
2,3
4,2
8,4
17,4
21,8
23,3
27,2
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33,0
38,9
44,3
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Discovery the next 30 years = 10 * ( 6,4+4,2+2,8) = 134 Gb
1) The average discovery per year from 1956 to 1965 is attributed to 1960,
etc
2) Extrapolation from a logarithmic fit to the data for 1970 - 2000
3) The average consumption per year from 1956 to 1965 is attributed to 1960,
etc
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