Shale Oil

Reserves and Production: A Simple Example (based on Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia)

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So far in this series of technical talks, I have tried to explain some of the pieces that have to be put together to get crude oil or natural gas out of the ground. I intend to go on with the series in the coming weeks, but thought that today I would put some of the different thoughts that I have talked about recently together. So I am going to talk a little about reserve calculations and production and will use an example to show how the numbers are derived. And again, let me stress that this is a very simplified example. It is also only somewhat fictionalized, as I shall comment at the end.

Resources and anthropocentrism

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Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.

Peak Oil Not a Problem According to NY Times; Scientific American – Our Response on the Financial Aspects

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Recently, we have had two new articles aiming to put to rest people’s fears about peak oil. One is from the New York Times: Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries It talks about the many discoveries this year, and how, if they continue at the pace they have in the first half, they will be the best since 2000. The other is from the October Scientific American, called Squeezing More Oil from the Ground…Its premise seems to be that there are a lot of promising areas that we have not yet explored. When you put this together with advances in drilling and the promises of secondary and tertiary recovery, there is a good chance that oil production will not peak for many years.

Review: Blackout by Richard Heinberg

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Richard Heinberg’s new book Blackout tries to demolish current assumptions about the world’s remaining coal endowment: namely, that it is immense beyond belief, barely tapped and will last for centuries to come. Heinberg argues that these assumptions are off-base, misleading and not at all supported by recent studies that suggest global coal production could peak in less than two decades.