From: Don Paul, Sat, 24 Jan 1998,
Jon: I have subsequently done a little more background work on
forcasting future world production ....It turns out that the 2008 peak
you quote is used by some of the more pessemistic oil
economists.....However, another way to think about this question is to
start with the current world oil production at about 72 million bbl/d
and use a demand /production growth rate of about 1 to 1.5 million
bbl/d...Somewhere in the range of 2015 to 2020, the production would hit
the 95 to 100 million bbl/d level, which many feel is about all the
system can deliver from a capital investment and infrastructure point of
view (reserves are not the limitation)....At that point, the system
would effectively flatten out for several years (but there would still
be several decades of reserves left) and begin a slow decline....These
numbers do not account for natural gas, which is much earlier in its
global development cycle and would reach its peak later in the century
(or maybe much later if methane hydrates ever become a practical
production source).
It is important to note that technology has significantly slowed the
decline rates compared to classical resource decline theories in the
most heavy developed oil patch - the US....Our production peaked in 1971
at about a 11 million bbl/d and in 1997 is about 8 million bbl/d....That
gives an average decline rate of only about 2% per year - less than
predicted from nornal depletion curves....Actually, US production may
decline even more slowly over the next few years as a major new trend,
the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, comes on stream.
The bottom line is that technology advances will keep pushing out the
decline curve until well into the next century for oil and even more so
for natural gas.....Other factors are much more likely to intervene in
the careers of earth scientists than actually running out of
hydrocarbons....Don
.