by Dr. Rafael Sandrea, President of IPC Petroleum Consultants Inc.
The early years of the twentieth century ushered in oil which developed into one of the most vibrant global industries of all times. One hundred years later, this industry has reached its zenith with the panorama of entering its twilight years in the second half of this twenty-first century. How far in the future can the happening of this event be deferred depends on how much we can decelerate a runaway demand and how expeditiously we can implement specialized EOR technologies. These measures will at least give us more breathing space to develop alternate energy forms, non hydrocarbon fuels and the like.
In no way is this to be construed that we are running out of oil. On the contrary we have shown throughout this report that there is a bounty of oil already discovered but the easy oil is gone and the massive resources left in the ground just don’t have the response capacity to satisfy a demand fueled by a healthy global economic growth.
THE GOALS OF THE REPORT AND MODEL
• Development of a physical model to predict the real production capacity of oil and gas reserves over the medium and long term. This model provides a real time comparison of accessible supply with the projected global demand outlooks of reputable institutions, and quantifies the future crude oil and natural gas production capacity of the Big Three producers – the US, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, through the end of the century.
• Appraisal of oil and gas reserves, and in-place volumes (resources) discovered so far, globally and for the top producing countries. This is fundamental since reserves are the foundation for determining the production capacity of oil and gas fields. Oil resources are further broken down by their depth and API gravity – light, medium, heavy and extra-heavy – important indicators of their aptness for recovery by the variety of EOR technologies.
• Assessment of offshore reserves and production potential. Offshore has been the main source of growth for world oil and gas production during the last 2 decades and is critical for the supply equation.
• Analysis of the development of unconventionals – shale oil, coalbed methane, shale gas, and tight sands gas – particularly in the US where major strides have been made over the last 2 decades. The object is to quantify their impact on supply in the medium term.
• Development of special algorithms to provide an early estimate of the production capacity of new undeveloped oil and gas fields, an issue of vital importance to supply analysts and for the design of production facilities. Establishing the real potential of an oil or gas field may take several years after discovery, following a costly appraisal drilling program. These algorithms are also useful to estimate the ultimate reserves of oil and gas fields that have already peaked.
• The relationship between production decline and reserves depletion is mathematically defined. This facilitates a better understanding of the decline behavior of aggregates of oil and gas fields as occurs at the country and global levels.
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Dr. Sandrea provides insights into global crude production in his PennEnergy.com microblog, Future Oil & Gas Supply-Potholes & Options.
