Ever wonder why the Tea Party hates building green?

[Dymanic]

Okay, you did BETTER THAN LEFTY.

Thank you. I worked pretty hard on that sentence, and was rather pleased with how it came out.

Here's what might be called a "baseline" shale oil study.

Where?

 

[mhaze]

Thank you. I worked pretty hard on that sentence, and was rather pleased with how it came out.

Where?

oops...

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.pdf

 

[Dymanic]

For example, the Rand study predicts about 1M b/day as of 2020.

Closer to 2025, based on this:

"Under high growth assumptions, an oil shale production level of 1 million barrels per day is probably more than 20 years in the future, and 3 million barrels per day is probably more than 30 years into the future."

But N. Dakota alone is doing 500K+/day, adding the other fields in gets better than 800k b/day.

So, if that's accurate, production is close to busting Rand's prediction, but hasn't quite done so yet.

No time now to find the exact production curve, got to run. And there wasn't anything wrong with the Rand study taking a conservative point of view.

I guess there's nothing wrong with you taking a liberal view of their conservative view (uh... or whatever would be the least awkward way of phrasing that), but it doesn't look like their view from seven years ago has so far turned out to be all that pessimistic, does it? The thing to keep in mind is that production from our mature oilfields is going to be continuing to decline at the same time that all this oil shale production is coming on line, so it's like walking up the down escalator. In November of 1970, US crude oil production hit its all-time high of 10,044 thousand barrels per day. In November of 2011, it was 5,842 (up a bit from the all-time low of 4,950 in 2009).

The IEA's Annual Energy Outlook 2012 takes a less optimistic view than the one in that Rand report:

"Domestic crude oil production is expected to grow by more than 20 percent over the coming decade: Domestic crude oil production increased from 5.1 million barrels per day in 2007 to 5.5 million barrels per day in 2010. Over the next 10 years, continued development of tight oil combined with the development of offshore Gulf of Mexico resources are projected to push domestic crude oil production to 6.7 million barrels per day in 2020, a level not seen since 1994."

It sure sounds optimistic, though. Doesn't it? It's not until you look at what that does for us on the historic graph of US oil production that you realize that even if everything stays rosy, it's really not a huge deviation from an ideal Hubbert curve:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Crude_Oil_Production_versus_Hubbert_Curve.png

It's like a 90-year-old guy crowing about how his new medicine is making him feel like he's 75 again..

 

[mhaze]

Closer to 2025, based on this:

"Under high growth assumptions, an oil shale production level of 1 million barrels per day is probably more than 20 years in the future, and 3 million barrels per day is probably more than 30 years into the future."

So, if that's accurate, production is close to busting Rand's prediction, but hasn't quite done so yet.

I guess there's nothing wrong with you taking a liberal view of their conservative view (uh... or whatever would be the least awkward way of phrasing that), but it doesn't look like their view from seven years ago has so far turned out to be all that pessimistic, does it? The thing to keep in mind is that production from our mature oilfields is going to be continuing to decline at the same time that all this oil shale production is coming on line, so it's like walking up the down escalator. In November of 1970, US crude oil production hit its all-time high of 10,044 thousand barrels per day. In November of 2011, it was 5,842 (up a bit from the all-time low of 4,950 in 2009).

The IEA's Annual Energy Outlook 2012 takes a less optimistic view than the one in that Rand report:

"Domestic crude oil production is expected to grow by more than 20 percent over the coming decade: Domestic crude oil production increased from 5.1 million barrels per day in 2007 to 5.5 million barrels per day in 2010. Over the next 10 years, continued development of tight oil combined with the development of offshore Gulf of Mexico resources are projected to push domestic crude oil production to 6.7 million barrels per day in 2020, a level not seen since 1994."
....

Why the difference in the production numbers?

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=us&v=88

 

[Dymanic]

Why the difference in the production numbers?

It's because the numbers for crude oil production do not include those for "other liquids", such as LNG.