Oil production

The formation of modern society has been dominated by coal and oil, and together these two fossil fuels account for nearly two thirds of all primary energy used by mankind. This makes future production a key question for future social development and this thesis attempts to answer whether it is possible to rely on an assumption of ever increasing production of coal and oil. Both coal and oil are finite resources, created over long time scales by geological processes. It is thus impossible to extract more fossil fuels than geologically available. In other words, there are limits to growth imposed by nature.

The concept of depletion and exhaustion of recoverable resources is a fundamental question for the future extraction of coal and oil. Historical experience shows that peaking is a well established phenomenon in production of various natural resources. Coal and oil are no exceptions, and historical data shows that easily exploitable resources are exhausted while more challenging deposits are left for the future.

For oil, depletion can also be tied directly to the physical laws governing fluid flows in reservoirs. Understanding and predicting behaviour of individual fields, in particularly giant fields, are essential for understanding future production. Based on comprehensive databases with reserve and production data for hundreds of oilfields, typical patterns were found. Alternatively, depletion can manifest itself indirectly through various mechanisms. This has been studied for coal.

Over 60% of the global crude oil production is derived from only around 330 giant oilfields, where many of them are becoming increasingly mature. The annual decline in existing oil production has been determined to be around 6% and it is unrealistic that this will be offset by new field developments, additional discoveries or unconventional oil. This implies that the peak of the oil age is here.

For coal a similar picture emerges, where 90% of the global coal production originates from only 6 countries. Some of them, such as the USA show signs of increasing maturity and exhaustion of the recoverable amounts. However, there is a greater uncertainty about the recoverable reserves and coal production may yield a global maximum somewhere between 2030 and 2060.

This analysis shows that the global production peaks of both oil and coal can be expected comparatively soon. This has significant consequences for the global energy supply and society, economy and environment. The results of this thesis indicate that these challenges should not be taken lightly.

Published in: Uppsala University, doctoral thesis
Available from: Uppsala University

In recent years, the economic and political aspects of energy problems have prompted many researchers and analysts to focus their attention on the Hubbert Peak Theory with the aim of forecasting future trends in world oil production.
In this paper, a model that attempts to contribute in this regard is presented; it is based on a variant of the well-known Hubbert curve. In addition, the sum of multiple-Hubbert curves (two cycles) is used to provide a better fit for the historical data on oil production (crude and natural gas liquid (NGL)).
Taking into consideration three possible scenarios for oil reserves, this approach allowed us to forecast when peak oil production, referring to crude oil and NGL, should occur. In particular, by assuming a range of 2250–3000 gigabarrels (Gb) for ultimately recoverable conventional oil, our predictions foresee a peak between 2009 and 2021 at 29.3–32.1 Gb/year.

Published in: Energy Policy, article in press
Available from: ScienceDirect

Hubbert predicted the time of U.S. peak production and the ultimate recovery of crude oil
by analysing smoothed growth curves derived from discovery and production data. Early work’
depended on independent recovery quantity estimates and predicted the production peak to be
about 1965-1970. Later, growth curves were used to predict both the year (1967) of the peak
more precisely and the quantity (170 billion bbl). A recent survey of growth curves describes their use as a well-established tool. However, the effect on ultimate oil production quantity due to social, political, economic, and technological effects has not been well addressed. Energy growth curves generally assume that future production will reflect previous production, which limits the recovery efficiency, for example, to an average of past values.

The amount of ultimately recoverable crude oil is found to be 181.1 billion bbl for the conterminous U.S. (including offshore). Inclusion of Alaska raises the total to 217.2 billion bbl.

Published in: Energy, Volume 19, Issue 7, July 1994, Pages 813-815
Available from: ScienceDirect

Peak oil research and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) have contributed a great deal to improve people's recognition of peak oil. Although peak oil is becoming a part of public recognition, it is still hard to say whether peak oil discussion will develop into a theory such as “peakoilism”. On one hand, there are still some difficult problems in peak oil research. On the other hand, the peakoilers have the potential for scientific research and have their allies: the climate change researchers and the new energy advocates. Oil is a limited, non-renewable resource, and an oil peak is inevitable. Peak oil theory is a kind of development theory rather than a crisis theory, which promotes reasonable utilization of the limited oil resources, promotes conservation, and encourages the development of renewable energy.

Published in: Energy Policy, Volume 37, Issue 6, June 2009, Pages 2136-2138
Available from: ScienceDirect

While there is good reason to expect crude oil production to be non-linear, previous studies that have examined the stochastic properties of crude oil production have assumed that crude oil production follows a linear process. If crude oil production is a non-linear process, conventional unit root tests, which assume linear and systematic adjustment, could interpret departure from linearity as permanent stochastic disturbances. The objective of this paper is to test for non-linearities and unit roots in crude oil production. To realize our objective, this study applies a threshold autoregressive model with an autoregressive unit root to monthly crude oil production for 17 OPEC and non-OPEC countries over the period January 1973 to December 2007. Specifically, first we test for the presence of non-linearities (threshold effects) in the production of crude oil in two regimes. Second, we test for a unit root against a non-linear stationary process in two regimes and a partial unit root process when the unit root is present in one regime only. We find that crude oil production is characterized by threshold effects. We find that for eleven of the countries a unit root was present in both regimes, while for the others a partial unit root was found to be present in either the first regime or second regime.

Published in: Energy Economics, Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 109-118
Available from: ScienceDirect