Comments on: More oil reserve handwaving

By: TB

TB — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 14:42:48 +0000

My eyebrows went up when that graph first popped up.

Of course, the left and right axes are not in the same units.

By: TB

TB — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:42:39 +0000

There’s one thing we can do about the political risks. Get as much oil as possible from North America.

By: podrock

podrock — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:36:28 +0000

Might not be the best metric to use to evaluate the situation. A pure rig count would not indicate how deep those rigs are drilling, or how remote they are. Exploration costs per barrel found would be better.

Here’s an article that is fairly recent on the cost of finding oil: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/11/us-oil-exploration-risk-analysis-idUSTRE61A28X20100211

(edit: image added)

By: bowser

bowser — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 05:01:02 +0000

All this oil concern is a bit like finding sugar for a diabetic. So what if you obtain more, it will kill the person.

The world has enough oil right now for every legitimate and illegitimate purpose forever. And “forever” won’t be long if we keep burning it. The best thing for mankind would be to run out.

The best think for the Earth would be to find more, burn more, and get rid of humans.

Problem solved.

By: TB

TB — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:01:36 +0000

I did find a dry hole rate on this page.

It only goes back to 1985, but it does look fairly flat.

By: TB

TB — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 03:53:35 +0000

There are other factors.

Back in the day, you could set up a wooden gantry and hit oil not too far down. I imagine the total number of wells was huge, and the productive percentage a huge number.

If you’re drilling very deep wells, or offshore or other exotic wells, drilling one well is a very laborious process. Maybe you get ten wells in a year instead of 500, and the productive percentage is a much smaller actual number of wells.

Just speculating, of course. Maybe I can find the article.