Oilwatch Monthly: new peaks, same plateau, depletion looms
November 23rd, 2008The November edition of Oilwatch Monthly is out. The production shows that global liquids production continues to be on the plateau reached in the last half of 2004.
Global all liquids production, which reached a new peak in July 2008, is since down but is on track to set a new average production record in 2008 (assuming production doesn’t drop precipitiously in the remainder of the year). Global crude production, which spiked to a new record high in July 2008, has since once again dropped below the previous peak reached in 2005.
The update notes that the IEA World Energy Outlook 2008 concluded that oncoming production is barely enough to cover the decline in oil fields that have passed their peak. The credit crunch and the decline of oil prices is making the depletion situation worse, as many projects are now seeing delays because they can no longer generate returns in this oil price environment and it is hard to get sufficient financing.
The Oil Drum: Europe has posted some of the graphics, a couple of which are reproduced below. One really interesting graphic that wasn’t posted shows gross energy available from liquid fuels Jan. 2004 – Oct. 2008, in BTUs. The graph also shows a plateau – but as the text points out, the actual energy available for society to consume is lower than shown in the chart because, increasingly, more energy is needed to bring the oil out of the ground as the oil industry has to drill deeper at more extreme locations and more energy is needed to process the lower quality oil as the world moves from conventional to more unconventional oil.
