With relatively little fanfare on the international stage, Lundin Petroleum and Statoil (and partners) have just recently jointly discovered one of the largest oil fields ever found in the North Sea. The Aldous Major South - Avaldsnes discovery on the Utsira High structure is currently estimated to contain 1.7 to 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The astonishing thing about this discovery is that it has lain undiscovered in a mature oil province for so long providing ample encouragement for explorers to go on exploring.Oil prices remain high because a) OPEC wants to create the idea of a shortfall to keep prices up, and b) central banks, including the Fed, pump "money" into the system and weaken our currency. There remains an enormous quantity of oil to be discovered and processed. (Whether or not we should use it is a different matter.)
Friday, December 30, 2011
Peak Oil is here and we are all doomed! Oh, wait.
Funny how these massive crude discoveries keep popping up, even though we are running out.
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2 comments:
Maybe good Lou if you did your homework and a little maths before making such a post.
Have a look at http://seekingalpha.com/article/157824-mexico-s-declining-oil-production-clarion-call-for-cantarell which lists the top 18 fields by URR. For all bar two the lower range of URR is in double figures of Gbb.
The North Sea field you quote although technically a "Giant field" is, at 1.7 URR a piddling little puddle compared with the likes of Ghawar and Burgan.
Will this field even be able to extract sufficient oil as production ramps up to offset decline in the rest of the North Sea - UK sector peak 1999, Norway sector peak 2001. I doubt it very much!
There's plenty of crude oil, but not like before - can't just jam a pipe in the ground and expect sweet crude to gush out.
Today's big oil finds are either difficult to access (deep underwater) or in a form that requires huge amounts of energy to process (oil sands/shale).
Plus crude oil deposits are no longer controlled by multi-national corporations, but instead by national governments (e.g. Venezuela) whose priority is clearly exploiting those for political gain, not maximizing production.
And all governments are engaged in depreciating the value of their currencies in a desperate attempt to shore up their local economies, so the price of all fossil fuel products will be going up in terms of whatever fiat currency you pick.
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