Oil Lasting Longer than Expected
The Cambridge Energy Research Associates consulting group has completed a survey of 811 producing oil fields throughout the world that produce more than two-thirds of the world's oil. It concluded that reserves are being depleted not at a rate of 7-8 percent per year, as had been suggested, but by just 4.5 percent per year. Furthermore, according to the group's report, that pace of depletion is not increasing.
The group found that, on the average, a large deposit reaches its peak of production after six years, remains at that peak for seven years, and experiences declining productivity for 12 years. Those figures for a small deposit are 3, 5 and 14+ years, respectively.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that 20 major research projects have predicted that oil production will reach a peak between 2007 and 2040. Two of those reports place that peak more than a century into the future, however. The CERA study places the peak no earlier than 2030. Peter Jackson, CERA director of oil industry activity, told Kommersant that 65 oil fields in Russia were considered in the latest report and that production at Russian deposits declines more slowly than the world average. “For [declining] deposits, the average world rate of fall is about 7.5 percent,” he said. “In Russia that indicator is 6 percent.” He attributed that difference to geological factors and investment in supporting production.
Anatoly Dmitrievsky, director of the Institute of Problems of Oil and Gas of the Russian Academy of Sciences, estimated that Russia's fossil fuel supplies will last another 420 years. He predicted that oil production will reach its peak in 2020-2025 and fall gradual after that, being replaced by nontraditional fuel sources.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 21, 2008
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