Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In oil, as in other extractive industries, you have what is called the “R/P ratio”. In the R/P ratio, “R” is reserves of whatever it is you are extracting, and “P” is the production rate, the rate at which you are extracting and using up your reserves.
Figure 1. World annual oil production in billions of barrels (blue line), and years left at that production rate (R/P ratio, red line). Right scale shows the proven oil reserves for each year, in billions of barrels (dotted green line). DATA SOURCE: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2011, a most fascinating Excel spreadsheet. PHOTO Spindletop Hill Gusher, 1901
When you divide the amount you have in reserves by the rate at which you are extracting the resource, you get the number of years the reserves will last at that rate of extraction. Accordingly, I include the R/P ratio in Figure 1 as “Years Left”
A couple of things to point out. First, the “Years Left”, the R/P ratio, is currently more than forty years … and has been for about a quarter century. Thirty years ago, we only had 30 years of proven oil reserves left. Estimates then said we would be running out of oil about now.
Twenty-five years ago, we had about forty years left. Ten years ago we had over forty years left. Now we have over forty-five years left. I’m sure you see the pattern here.
Second, this is only what are termed “proven reserves” (Wiki). It does not include “unproven reserves”, much of which is in the form of unconventional oils such as shale oil and oil sands. Even discounting the unproven reserves, while the rate of production has increased, the proven reserves have also increased at about the same rate. So the R/P ratio, the years left at the current rate of production, has stayed over forty years for almost a quarter century..
Now, at some point this party has to slow down, nothing goes on forever … but the data shows we certainly don’t need to hurry to replace oil with solar energy or rainbow energy or wind energy in the next few decades. We have plenty of time for the market to indicate the replacement.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to find a better energy source than oil. In fact, the huge new sources of shale gas will substitute in many areas for things like heating oil, and will burn cleaner in the bargain. And I do think we’ll find new sources of energy, humans are endlessly inventive.
I’m just registering my protest against the meme of “OMG we’re running out of oil we must change energy sources right now tomorrow!!”. It is simply not true. We have plenty of time. We have decades. We don’t have to blow billions of dollars of our money subsidizing solar and wind and biofuels. The world has enough oil to last for a long while, plenty long enough for the market to determine whatever the next energy source might be.
w.
NOTE: Oil figures, particularly reserves, are estimates. Oil companies are notoriously close-mouthed about their finds and the extent of their holdings. The advantage of the BP figures is that they are a single coherent time series. Other data gives somewhat different results. As far as I know the increase in proven reserves despite increasing production is common to all estimates.
bananabender says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:29 am
@Les Francis,
oil has been found in the Lost City underwater geothermal vents, in granite basement rock in Vietnam (White Tiger field)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%E1%BA%A1ch_H%E1%BB%95_oil_field
The Bạch Hổ oil field (White Tiger oilfield) is a major oil field in the Cuu Long basin of the South China Sea located offshore due east of the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The field contains major reserves hosted within highly fractured granitic basement rocks. The Cuu Long basin is a rift zone developed during the Oligocene to Early Miocene. The rift occurred in Jurassic to Late Cretaceous granite to granodiorite intrusions.[1][2] The fractured granitic rocks occur as a horst overlain and surrounded by Upper Oligocene lacustrine shale source rocks.[1]
Bạch Hổ is not the only oil field convincingly shown to be hosted in granite;[3] however, inspection of the seismic profile of the area shows faulted basement passive margin which is sealed by an onlapping sedimentary sequence.[4][5]
It is plausible that the oil has migrated laterally from the lowermost, mature sediments into the fault systems within the granite. The seismic profile shows a definite basement horst with onlapping sedimentary source rocks, draped by a reservoir seal.[6] This trap view would see the oil migrate up the horst bounding faults from the lower source units, into the trap unit draped over the top.
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and at depths over 4000m of the Brazilian coast. According to the best Western oil geologists none of these places would produce oil. They were all found using Russian Abiogenic Oil Theory
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BS. I already posted that the Tupi field has been shown to have a biological source.
James F. Evans says:
December 14, 2011 at 11:01 pm
Nobody knows how fast abiotic oil is produced.
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Nobody has found any abiotic oil that has been produced, that would suggest that it is either very slow or non-existent. I personally plug for the latter.
Spector says:
December 15, 2011 at 5:37 am
“I still think we need to look to something like fluid-state, thorium reactor technology to fend off the eventual carbon depletion crisis. Kirk Sorensen has said that thorium has a million times the energy density of combustible carbon. We should be able to obtain that energy, one way, or another. His continually cycling, fluid salt reactors promise to remove almost all the dangerous, medium-lived, transuranic wastes and achieve near 100 percent fissile efficiency.”
Until someone invents a material that can simultaneously resist the corrosive action of molten salt and the embrittlement action of high neutron flux the liquid salt reactor is dead in the water. There are no known materials from which to build the pumps and plumbing that can last long enough to make it economically feasible. This is the same problem that plagues hot fusion schemes – there is no known material that can withstand the fusion chamber conditions for long enough to make it economical to operate.
This is the bane of conventional nuclear power plants only they don’t have the corrosion problem to deal with just the embrittlement problem. So they have to periodically shut down the plant and inspect the pressure vessel and associated gear exposed to high neutron flux for problems caused by embrittlement.
bananabender says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:29 am
oil has been found in the Lost City underwater geothermal vents
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No oil has been found in these vents, just methane and hydrogen just like the methane found on Titan and numerous other comets and planets.
Please, all you people who claim abiotic oil happens, please point to ONE field that is definitively from an abiotic source. Not this theoretical it might be. I hope I don’t have to check and find out that indeed the field you post is in fact biotic. so please make sure you check out the geology. Google works you know.
bananabender says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:29 am
The smart way to find oil is to ignore the sediments and to explore near tectonic plate boundaries. These plate boundaries are where every major oil field in the world occurs.
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The whole of West Africa and Eastern South America will be dissapointed to hear this as they are not on a plate boundary. All those billions of barrels of oil found and it wasn’t in the smart place to explore! Silly explorationist should have been looking on iceland all this time!
bananabender says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:29 am
“The smart way to find oil is to ignore the sediments and to explore near tectonic plate boundaries. These plate boundaries are where every major oil field in the world occurs.”
I happened to grow up near a major oil field that’s NOT on a plate boundary. Pennsylvania to be specific. I also lived near an oil field in California. That IS on a plate boundary. I now live near oil fields in Texas which isn’t particularly close to a plate boundary.
[SNIPPED for gratuitous nastiness. Rein in your mouth, Dave. -w.]
Dave Springer at 8:08 am
in reply to Mike Borgelt: “Oh good, Les Francis. Now please tell us why there are heaps of hydrocarbons on Titan.”
For the same reason there is a huge fusing ball of hydrogen at the center of the solar system. It’s primordial. For better or worse the inner planets and moons got stripped of most of their free light elements by the heat of the sun and strength of the solar wind and, as a consequence, they are rocky/metallic things.
Did you really not know that?
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Did you really not know that your response was not only very rude … but very wrong?
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[…] unlike water in the Earth’s atmosphere that continually renews itself, methane is destroyed by ultraviolet light, so Titan must have a source deep inside, scientists said. Based on data collected by Huygens’ instruments, Sushil Atreya, a professor of planetary science at the University of Michigan in the United States, believes a hydro-geological process between water and rocks deep inside the moon could be producing the methane.”I think the process is quite likely in the interior of Titan,” Atreya said in a telephone interview.
The process is called serpentinisation and is basically the reaction between water and rocks at 100 to 400 degrees Celsius (212 to 752 degrees Fahrenheit), he said.
http://esse.engin.umich.edu/PSL/PRESS/Titan_Cassini_Huygens/AP_Wire_012705.pdf
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“The methane giving an orange hue to Saturn’s giant moon Titan likely comes from geologic processes in its interior according to measurements from the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS), a Goddard Space Flight Center instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Huygens Probe.”
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=18410
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LazyTeenager says:
December 14, 2011 at 8:32 pm
This whole article is something of a straw man. The right conclusion to draw from this is that we use oil now because it is incredibly cheap. Any substitute is going to be used when the oil gets expensive and makes expensive substitutes more economically viable.
So wasting oil by not using it efficiently or using it where it is not needed simply hastens the time when energy usage gets more expensive.
Things like wind power and solar represent a path to a graceful transition to using other kinds of energy. This is good since no one knows how fast prices will start to increase if oil supply downward trends meets energy demand upward trends and at what point in the future this will happen.
Obviously, as oil gets more expensive in relation to alternatives, people will begin to transition towards those alternatives. That time, as Willis shows is very likely decades in the future. Sorry, but wind and solar are not only way too expensive, but they do not even replace oil, since those are used to create electricity, and only a small fraction of oil (perhaps 1%) is used to create electricity.
There is no reason (other than alarmism) to think that oil prices are going to skyrocket due to diminishing supplies, so that is just use of the illogical Precautionary Principle on your part.
The argument that people shouldn’t waste energy is idiotic, and usually hypocritical to boot. It isn’t energy per se that we should worry about wasting, but money.
So …… Could we rationally speculate that solving these basic production scalability problems is a very time-consuming and expensive proposition, one with little prospect of any kind of substantial near-term return on the money invested, and that production of economic quantities of biofuels from synthetic biology techniques is anywhere from fifty to a hundred years away at current rates of progress?
Spector wrote: “…but I think its [Abiotic Oil] primary implication would be that we may be overlooking some areas where additional combustible carbon may be found.”
Agreed. But I would add, there is likely additional oil in areas already explored, but at deeper levels in the crust, all the way down to the basement (bedrock). This has already been confirmed in some older oil fields where the original oil wells where at relatively shallow levels in the geological formation.
SteveE wrote: “Nobody has found any abiotic oil that has been produced, that would suggest that it is either very slow or non-existent. I personally plug for the latter.”
On the contrary, the best evidence is that all oil is abiotic. But then you would need to consider ALL the evidence supporting Abiotic Oil Theory (and all the evidence supporting Fossil Theory, plus evidence contradicting both theories) before arriving at a conclusion. I have done that, have you?
Regarding so-called “source rock”, this is supposed to be strong evidence for “fossil theory”, but there is an easy explanation via Abiotic Oil Theory: The Fischer-Tropsch Type geo-physcial-chemical production of ‘rock oil’ includes heavy hydrocarbons, aka long-chain hydrocarbons, ie, kerogen (C215H330). See Szatmari (1989), “… this [Fischer-Tropsch] synthetic oil consists of gas, gasoline, diesel oil, and wax fractions, all rich in saturated aliphatic hydrocarbons and enriched in the light 12C isotope.” So “source rock” (sedimentary rock embedded with percentages of kerogen) is the result of long-term abiotic production of hydrocarbons where the heavy hydrocarbons dropout or precipitate and end up embedded in the sedimentary rock. It is possible that secondary ‘cracking’ of long-chain hydrocarbons, kerogens, due to heat causes the production of shorter-chain hydrocarbons, including methane gas.
Again, the Szatmari paper is an important read:
Petroleum Formation by Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis in Plate Tectonics, by Peter Szatmari (1989)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4653669/Petroleum-Formation-by-FischerTropsch-Synthesis-Peter-Szatmari
Good news for oil geologists: Locating “source rock” is important in Abiotic Oil Theory, just as it is in so-called “fossil theory” — find “source rock” and deposits of petroleum will likely be found in nearby geologic formations 🙂
bananabender says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:29 am
“The smart way to find oil is to ignore the sediments and to explore near tectonic plate boundaries. These plate boundaries are where every major oil field in the world occurs.”
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Please, stop being poster children for “know enough to be dangerous”.
Interior cratonic basins contain 31% of the world’s giant oil fields. Basins on passive margins another 33%. Subduction margins, collision zone foreland basins and strike slip margins only 14%.
The smart way to find oil is just the way we do it (including the Russians), look for the right combination of organic source, reservoir rock, and trap.
James F. Evans says:
December 15, 2011 at 8:31 am
SteveE wrote: “Nobody has found any abiotic oil that has been produced, that would suggest that it is either very slow or non-existent. I personally plug for the latter.”
On the contrary, the best evidence is that all oil is abiotic. But then you would need to consider ALL the evidence supporting Abiotic Oil Theory (and all the evidence supporting Fossil Theory, plus evidence contradicting both theories) before arriving at a conclusion. I have done that, have you?
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Yes I have.
Your suggestion that source rock is the product of abiotic oil migration is just plain wrong, why then are there biogenic signitures in all source rocks? Why do source rocks at different depths have different maturity. Why are some source rocks gas prone and other oil prone? Why isn’t all basement rocks charged with abiotic oil?
You really don’t know what you are talking about I’m afraid.
bananabender says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:29 am
“The smart way to find oil is to ignore the sediments and to explore near tectonic plate boundaries. These plate boundaries are where every major oil field in the world occurs.”
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Alaskan oil fields, not boundary. Bakken, not boundary. Alberta fields, not boundary. Ghawar, not boundary. North Sea, not boundary. Cantarel, not boundary. need I go on?
I agree with the R/P ratio statement but there is more to this story.. I examined BP Statistical Review (2010) data about a year ago, did a similar analysis and found the same result on a global basis. The world’s forward reserve is ever-increasing but this is NOT true for North America if considered alone. In North America, the production rate is decreasing slightly year-to-year while its reserve is also decreasing but at a more rapid rate so that the R/P ratio for NA is NEGATIVE.
TimTheToolMan says:
December 15, 2011 at 2:52 am
Tim, I said to “keep the production rate up”. Not to keep it up through to the end of the resource, that’s your interpretation. But to increase the production rate prior to the end of the resource. Surely you are not disputing that any given field can yield oil faster or slower depending on the number and type of wells and the kind of enhanced recovery techniques involved.
w.
TO JRWakefiield: Near plate boundaries is not where oil is found. You are obviously not a petroleum geologist so are unaware of these matters. Oil, with respect to tectonic plates, is found at the trailing edge. Nearly all of the major oil fields are found in this situation. Take for example the oil fields bordering the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, including the giants of offshore Brazil, Argentina, Niger, North Sea, Newfoundland, as examples. Oil is found in thrust belts but its not so substantial in a province to province comparison. The oil finds on the Pacific coasts near points of tectonic convergence are quite miniscule compared the trailing edges.
David Boleneus says:
December 15, 2011 at 10:14 am
TO JRWakefiield: Near plate boundaries is not where oil is found. You are obviously not a petroleum geologist so are unaware of these matters. Oil, with respect to tectonic plates, is found at the trailing edge. Nearly all of the major oil fields are found in this situation. Take for example the oil fields bordering the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, including the giants of offshore Brazil, Argentina, Niger, North Sea, Newfoundland, as examples. Oil is found in thrust belts but its not so substantial in a province to province comparison. The oil finds on the Pacific coasts near points of tectonic convergence are quite miniscule compared the trailing edges.
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Actually I do know quite a bit of geology, including petroleum geology. Here is the flaw in your argument. The plate boundary off of the Atlantic is currently in the middle, the Mid Atlantic Ridge, a spreading ridge. As the Atlantic started to open, some 200myo, a new sea formed and life flourished. But most importantly, rivers and erosion started to deposit silt and detritus along the new continental shelf, burring those organisms. Thus there is some 200 myo of accumulated sediment as the spreading ridge became further from those coastlines. It is there that the oil formed, in those sediments. Yes tectonics split the continent, but only made the conditions for organic matter to accumulate.
The Tupi field, off Brazil, is a nice example. During the early opening of the Atlantic the new sea was shallow (the source rock’s vast fossils of clams etc shows this), and the extensive evaporite deposits above the host rock shows that many times, that shallow basin evaporated completely, many times.
The North Sea is the same. Except it is not a plate boundary at all, it is a stretched graben. The Gulf of Mexico is a failed triple junction as the Atlantic split from the south up. (So is Nigeria). However, the Cantarel isn’t from normal long term accumulation of biogentic layers. The oil was cooked and formed because of the impact of an asteroid some 65myo which slammed into rich marine ecosystems.
As noted, Bakken is no where near any plate boundaries, neither is Ghawar, nor any of the oil and gas deposits of Alberta, including the tar sands, nor are the fields in Texas, and there is no plate boundary along the north slope of Alaska.
So tectonics indeed plays a role in oil formation, as it starts the process for sedimentary accumulation in highly biotic shallow marine environments.
Now, I have read a lot of books on how oil is formed. I suggest you read them too. Start with Oil 101, then move on to Twighlight in the Desert. The latter is on peak oil, but Simmons goes into great technical detail on oil formations around the world.
Amusingly, the whole process of biotic oil production is pure hand-waving. Neither in the lab nor on paper nor in computer simulations has a chemical sequence been identified which produces oil from biological sediment. Especially pure high-grades of oil, with all sorts of elements common to biological debris magically excluded.
But the assembly of oils from methane and water under extreme pressure and heat is comparatively straight-forward, or at least feasible.
What we have here is another case of Loud Consensus. The louder, the likelier it’s loopy.
@JeffK says:
December 14, 2011 at 9:01 pm
“…Sorry, don’t buy it….”
I know. You’re a candidate to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
For those who like gases and fluids being generated out of the Earth’s interior, go check out the genesis of diamonds. Some fun stuff there (and a mighty blast of CO2 into the atmosphere over time).
This comment is, as much as anything, a check if the website is still active. I have received nothing new at WUWT for well over 24 hours- it remains at the oil posting. I hope that this does not mean any problems for Anthony, for WUWT is such a valuable resource for all of us.
IanM
REPLY: problem on your end, lots has happened – Anthony
SteveE, if you are familiar with all the evidence for and against abiotic oil then please present specific objections to Peter Szatmari’s paper that I linked to above.
In regards to so-called “source rocks” having “biomarkers”, generally, these consist of contaminants in the oil and organic molecules that have been found in chondrite meteorites.
So called “source rock” have different compositions, you call “maturity”. This is because different deposits have different ages and are subject to different conditions, ie. heat and pressure.
Brian H:
The Fischer-Tropsch synthesis of oil has not just been done in the laboratory, but in industiral commericial quantities.
Numerous geologists including some petroleum geologists subscribe to Abiotic Oil Theory.
Tectonic Setting of the World’s Giant Oil and Gas Fields by Dr. Paul Mann presented at the Houston Geological Society (Dr. Mann is not known to subscribe to Abiotic Oil Theory).
http://www.hgs.org/en/articles/printview.asp?236
But it does present evidence for where the biggest oil fields are located.
Hydrothermal Hydrocarbons by Stanley Keith, who does subscribe to Abiotic Oil Theory.
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/abstracts/2005research_calgary/abstracts/extended/keith/keith.htm
burn it, baby, burn it…. there’s always more stuff to burn…
HEEEELLLPP!! i have repeatedly googled “wattsupwiththat” as well as clicking on the words in my Favorites listing, and every time I get taken to the “R/P ratio” posting.
IanM