Critic: Facts bury theory on Peak Oil
Edward Klump, denverpost.com, 13 Feb 2008Bloomberg News - IHS Inc., owner of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said those who espouse the theory that the world's oil production has already peaked lack evidence to support their claims.
"The only thing that's relevant is our data," Jerre Stead, chief executive at Douglas County-based IHS, said Wednesday in an interview in Houston.
Believers in the so-called Peak Oil theory "don't have our data," he said.
Stead made his comments at an industry conference hosted by Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
U.S. oil futures jumped 57 percent last year on the way to topping $100 a barrel for the first time in January. ... Read full article
The CERAWEEK 2008 energy conference was held in Houston last week. CERA also published a full eight pages of commentary in a Special Advertising Section of the U.S. Wall Street Journal on February 12 and 13 titled “Focus On Energy: CERAWEEK 2008”.
CERA states that one of the conclusions of their analysis of the world’s 811 largest producing oilfields is that the big fields start to decline after an average 13 years of production and the smaller fields start to decline after an average 8 years of production.
Since all the fields have been in production for some years it is reasonable to say that today’s largest oil fields will start to show a cumulative decline sometime in the next decade. Isn’t that what most producers outside of OPEC have been saying?
The next question is how much new oil and biofuel will be available in the next decade? CERA reiterates that combined old and new oil plus biofuels will amount to about 112 mbd in 2017 but does not go into detail.
CERA also says, “The issue of climate change poses the first serious challenge to fossil fuels primacy”. How about depletion? We are not looking for oil inside the arctic circle and in ultra deep water because we are afraid of global warming, but because we are running out of adequate conventional oil sources.