From "The End of Oil" by Paul C. Roberts
1) Oil fields are considered mature when they pump more water out of the ground than oil. As such, every major oil field in the world is already pumping more water out of the ground than oil (The US is very mature at something like 100 to 1; Saudi Arabia one of the least mature at 5 to 1). As such, oil will just continue to get more expensive because the cost of retrieving oil increases dramatically as the well matures. Add increased demand from China and India and supply cannot keep up with demand.
2) The oil fields that we will find in the future will in large part be harder to get to, harder to extract, and harder to ship to appropriate markets. Geologists largely know where the remaining oil will come from. One boon for oil companies was previously "closed" countries....say communist countries that opened to outside investment and outside exploration. Do you know how long it took oil executives to find the largest oil well in all of Kazakhstan, once it opened? 36 minutes.
3) OPEC sets the quota for each country's oil production based on how many oil reserves they establish. (Oil reserves meaning how much oil a country has already discovered but has not yet tapped). This encourages participating OPEC to inflate their oil reserve numbers to be able to pump more oil today. A geologist traveling to Saudi Arabia several years ago concluded that Saudi Arabia had VASTLY overestimated its own oil reserves.
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