What we all need to know about depletion numbers
November 1st, 2008Sharon Astyk has written a boffo piece about the significance of the IEA’s leaked conclusion that the decline rate of existing fields is 9.1%. I mentioned it here, but Astyk has said it better, with clarity and power. I guess that’s why she’s a famous blogger, and I’m not.
Earlier this week, the Financial Times leaked the International Energy Agency’s figures that show the rate of decline in production of the 400 largest oilfields in the world. They concluded that without massive increased investment, the annual decline will be 9.1%. What’s this mean? Astyk quotes Richard Heinberg:
“Considering regular crude oil only, this means that 6.825 million barrels a day of new production capacity must come on line each year just to keep up with the aggregate natural decline rate in existing oilfields. That’s a new Saudi Arabia every 18 months.”
Astyk points out that not only have we already used up most of the easy oil, we’ve used up most of the best quality oil. Replacing oil with renewable energy sources will itself require oil and money – at the same time both of these are becoming scarcer and more precious.
We’re in a fix. The only point about which I would quibble is her warning that “we’re probably going to have to make do with a lot less.” I would leave out the “probably.” But as she says, “the good news is that that’s not such a bad thing.”
She concludes by demanding we bravely and honestly confront the challenges we face.
“Maybe we won’t have all the energy we want, but we have the courage to live differently. But before we can meet that challenge, we have to know what we’re facing.”