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Shaping the Global Oil Peak: a Review of the Evidence on Field Sizes, Reserve Growth, Decline Rates and Depletion Rates

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Shaping the Global Oil Peak: a Review of the Evidence on Field Sizes, Reserve Growth, Decline Rates and Depletion Rates Energy xxx (2011) 1e16 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/energy Shaping the global oil peak: A review of the evidence on field sizes, reserve growth, decline rates and depletion rates Steve Sorrell a,*, Jamie Speirs b, Roger Bentley c, Richard Miller d, Erica Thompson b a Sussex Energy Group, SPRU (Science & Technology Policy Research), Freeman Centre, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QE, UK b Imperial College Centre for Energy Policy and Technology, London, UK c Department of Cybernetics, University of Reading, UK d Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, London, UK article info abstract Article history: This review paper summarises and evaluates the evidence regarding four issues that are considered to be Received 13 July 2011 of critical importance for future global oil supply. These are: a) how regional and global oil resources are Received in revised form distributed between different sizes of field; b) why estimates of the recoverable resources from indi- 7 October 2011 vidual fields tend to grow over time and the current and likely future contribution of this to global Accepted 9 October 2011 reserve additions; c) how rapidly the production from different categories of field is declining and how Available online xxx this may be expected to change in the future; and d) how rapidly the remaining recoverable resources in a field or region can be produced. It is shown that, despite serious data limitations, the level of Keywords: Oil depletion knowledge of each of these issues has improved considerably over the past decade. While the evidence Peak oil on reserve growth appears relatively encouraging for future global oil supply, that on decline and Reserve Growth depletion rates does not. Projections of future global oil supply that use assumptions inconsistent with Decline rates this evidence base are likely to be in error. Depletion rates Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction global oil supply and now acknowledges that the global production of crude oil1 has past its peak [15e17]. Conventional oil (namely crude oil, condensate and natural gas Oil discovery and production is shaped by multiple geological, liquids) currently accounts for over 97% of global liquid fuels technical, economic and political factors that combine to create production and is still expected to account for around 90% in 2030 considerable uncertainty over future supply. Disagreement over [1]. But many commentators are forecasting a near-term peak and medium to long-term supply projections is further influenced by subsequent terminal decline in the production of conventional oil, competing disciplinary orientations, methodological disputes, with alternative sources being unable to ‘fill the gap’ on the time- inadequate data and conflicting evidence over the contribution of scale required [2,3]. In contrast, others argue that liquid fuels key variables such as ‘reserve growth’ [7]. Nevertheless, there is production will be sufficient to meet global demand well into the potential for increasing the degree of consensus in a number of 21st century, as rising prices stimulate new discoveries, enhanced areas and considerable progress has been made over the last few recovery and the development of non-conventional resources such years. The objective of this paper is to summarise the current state as oil sands [4e6]. The topic of ‘peak oil’ is notoriously contentious of knowledge regarding four issues which are expected to have and confused and both the academic and policy debates remain a critical influence on the timing and shape of the global oil peak, polarised. However, knowledge is growing in key areas [7] and namely: many companies [8], governments [9e11], commentators [12,13] and international organisations [14] are becoming increasing Field-size distributions: how regional and global oil resources pessimistic about future supply. For example, the IEA (International are distributed between different sizes of field and the relative Energy Agency) has steadily reduced its long-term projections for importance of large and small fields. * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ44 1273 877067. 1 Excluding natural gas liquids, and non-conventional sources such as oil sands E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Sorrell). and biofuels. 0360-5442/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.energy.2011.10.010 Please cite this article in press as: Sorrell S, et al., Shaping the global oil peak: A review of the evidence on field sizes, reserve growth, decline rates and depletion rates, Energy (2011), doi:10.1016/j.energy.2011.10.010 2 S. Sorrell et al. / Energy xxx (2011) 1e16 Reserve growth: why estimates of the recoverable resources Table 1 from individual fields tend to grow over time and how much Ivanhoe and Leckie’s estimates of the size distribution of the world’s oil fields. growth may be expected in the future. Category Estimated URR (mb) No. in world Decline rates: how rapidly the production from different cate- Megagiant >50,000 2 gories of field is declining and how this may be expected to Super-giant 5000e50,000 40 change in the future. Giant 500e5000 328 Major 100e500 961 Depletion rates: how rapidly the remaining recoverable e fi Large 50 100 895 resources in a eld or region can be produced. Medium 25e50 1109 Small 10e25 2128 Each of these issues is a continuing focus of misunderstanding Very small 1e10 7112 and dispute which in turn fuels the broader dispute about global oil Tiny 0.1e1 10,849 Insignificant <0.1 17,740 depletion [18e20]. Hence, it is useful to clarify the current state of knowledge on these issues and to identify the key uncertainties. Total 41,164 The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 summarises the Source: [24]. evidence on the size distribution of oil fields, including the domi- nance of large fields, the importance of sampling bias and the giant’ fields with a URR exceeding 5 Gb (i.e. >73 days current global potential contribution of small fields to global supply. Section 3 supply) with the largest (Ghawar in Saudi Arabia) having a URR of examines the phenomenon of reserve growth, including the rela- w140 Gb (w5 years current global supply). The 1300 fields with tive contribution of different factors to reserve growth, the fore- a URR exceeding 0.1 Gb represented only 3% of the total but casting of reserve growth and the growth in global oil reserves accounted for 94% of cumulative discoveries. The remaining 39,000 since 1995. Section 4 summarises the evidence on field decline fields accounted for less than 6% of the total and individually rates, including definitions and models of decline rates, illustrative contributed only a tiny fraction of global production. examples and estimates of global average decline rates from Similar results were obtained by Robelius [25], who provided an currently producing fields. Section 5 clarifies the relationship updated analysis of the world’s ‘giant’ oil fields using data from between decline rates and depletion rates and shows how the latter a variety of sources. Robelius estimated that there were w47,500 oil provide constraints on viable supply forecasts. Section 6 concludes. fields in the world in 2005, 73% of which were in the United States.3 Only 507 (w1%) of these were ‘giants’ with an estimated URR of 2. Field-size distributions more than 0.5 Gb, of which 430 were in production and 17 under development. Robelius estimated that the 100 largest fields Methods of resource assessment and supply forecasting accounted for 45% of the global production of crude oil (Fig.1) while frequently rely upon assumptions about the size distribution of oil the giants as a whole accounted for approximately two thirds of fields within a region, where ‘size’ refers to the estimated URR global cumulative discoveries. Half of these giants were discovered (ultimately recoverable resources) of each field. It is well established more than 50 years ago. that: a A different approach was taken by Simmons [26], who defined giant fields as those producing more than 100 kb/d (i.e. 0.14% of the majority of recoverable resources within a region tend to be current global production of crude oil).4 He estimated that there contained within a small number of large fields; and were 116 giants under this definition in 2002, accounting for these large fields tend to be discovered relatively early, with approximately half the global production of crude oil. The smallest subsequent discoveries being progressively smaller and 62 of these fields accounted for only 12% of production while the requiring more effort to locate. largest 14 accounted for over 20%. More up-to-date estimates were provided by the IEA [1] who This rule seems broadly applicable at levels ranging from indi- used Ivanhoe’s classification system and relied heavily upon vidual ‘exploration plays’2 to the entire world. However, the precise a global oil field database supplied by IHS Energy. The IEA estimated form of the size distribution varies from one region to another and that 70,000 oil fields were in production in 2007, but around 60% of is a long-standing focus of dispute [21e23]. Of particular interest is crude oil production derived from 374 fields (54 super-giant and the proportion of resources contained within very large and very 320 giant). An additional 84 giant fields were either under devel- small fields, since the former dominate current oil production and opment or ‘fallow’ (i.e. discovered but not developed). Approxi- the latter are expected to become increasingly important in the mately half of global production derived from only 110 fields, 25% future. from only 20 fields and as much as 20% from only 10 fields, with Ghawar accounting for a full 7%.
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