A conference held in Cork, Ireland by the Association for the Study of
Peak oil and Gas (ASPO) last week [1] heard representatives from
industry forecast that the best data available data pointed to
reserves of 250 billion barrels of yet-to-find global conventional
oil, and as a result oil production would plateau at less than 100
million barrels per day before 2020. This was followed up by a range
of speakers who stated that current trends in bringing new projects
onstream indicate that global oil production would peak on or before
2012, a forecast that coincides with the latest announcement from
International Energy Agency that an oil crunch will occur by 2012 [2].
The case for a plateau in global oil production of less than 100M
barrels/day before 2020 was put by Ray Leonard, Vice President
(Eurasia) of Kuwait Energy Company, who presented a summary of the
results from the Hedberg Conference [3]. The Hedberg conference
concluded that there were about 250 B barrels of conventional oil
yet-to-find, 200 -1000 B barrels will be available from reserves
growth, and future production from unconventional oil [4] is unlikely
to exceed 6 Mb/d. Taking all these factors into account, Leonard
forecast that global oil production will plateau at less than 100 M
barrels/ day before 2020. This forecast was reiterated by Mike
Rodgers, Senior Partner with the highly respected US-based energy
consultancy PFC Energy.
There then followed a series of speakers led by Chris Skrebowski,
editor of the London-based Energy Institute’s Petroleum Review [5],
who share the previous speakers’ views on reserves, but concluded that
global oil production will peak about 2011. Skrebowski presented data
from his MegaProjects database [6] that showed oil production from new
projects will peak in 2009, then decline such that by 2011-2012,
depletion from existing fields will outstrip growth from new fields.
Skrebowski stated that it is possible to forecast production capacity
from new fields 5-6 years ahead because it takes an average of 6-7
years to take a major oil field from first discovery to first
production. While there may be 250B barrels of conventional oil
yet-to-be discovered, if any particular field was not already being
developed, it was unlikely to be producing before 2013. There are
exceptions, but for every field that could be developed in less than
six years, there was one that would take longer. A global peak in oil
production by 2011 was backed up by James Buckee, CEO of Talisman
Energy Inc.
Summarising, Douglas Low, Director of ODAC, said: “The conference
speakers from both industry and the Peak Oil community agreed that
there were two scenarios for a maximum in global oil production. The
emphasis from the first group of speakers was that based on the best
oil reserves data, global oil production would plateau before 2020, at
less than 100M barrels / day. The second group agreed with the reserve
figures quoted, but said that due to constraints in implementing new
projects such as lack of skilled staff, resource nationalism and oil
depletion, global oil production was likely to peak rather than
plateau no later than 2011. Now that this analysis is backed up by the
IEA’s recent forecast that we are facing a global supply crunch by
2012, we have to start asking why our governments are not treating the
oil supply issue with an increased sense of urgency.”
