Wikileaks: Saudis overstating oil reserves?

[ricosuave]

$200/bbl oil in the future?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...ated-wikileaks

[burn_this_city]

I read a book on this called Twilight in the Desert.
Some fun facts from the book.

They revised their total proven reserves by 100 billion barrels to increase their opec quota in the 70's. At the time they claimed there had to be that much in the unexplored empty quarter, unfortunately there wasnt very much oil to be discovered.

They've been pumping out of their superfields like Ghawar for 50 years. Their secondary recovery involves pumping 10+ million of barrels of sea water straight out of the Persian gulf into the ground everyday.

During the Arab oil embargo, they likely damaged their reserves helping their buddies in the US. They went from 3ish million barrels a day to 10 in a very short amount of time, if you open the valve too wide you'll never get the maximum amount out over the long term.

They are a monarchy and SaudiAramco is under no obligation to divulge any information. Kind of scary that a country that has provided 1/8 barrels of oil ever consumed can hide their data.

[CaramonLS]

Twilight in the desert is a great book - nice and double spaced, filled with a couple cute charts and graphs. Reads like a work of fiction.

It uses flawed arguments and a whole lot of conjecture. It's a 20th century version of Thomas Malthus.

While it does raise some interesting facts, it tries to draw conclusions from data we simply don't have.

Remember this - we really don't know when we're going to reach "peak oil", or the rate at which we will keep discovering oil, or the rate at which technology is advancing to make the oil that we can access economically recoverable. But saying this doesn't sell books.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

Twilight in the desert is a great book - nice and double spaced, filled with a couple cute charts and graphs. Reads like a work of fiction.

It uses flawed arguments and a whole lot of conjecture. It's a 20th century version of Thomas Malthus.

While it does raise some interesting facts, it tries to draw conclusions from data we simply don't have.

Remember this - we really don't know when we're going to reach "peak oil", or the rate at which we will keep discovering oil, or the rate at which technology is advancing to make the oil that we can access economically recoverable. But saying this doesn't sell books.

This approaches my level of condescension and that's why I like it.

[Weiser Wonder]

Sounds like good news for Alberta.

[burn_this_city]

I could care less about the formatting of a book compared to the overall message. Don't put too much faith in a monarchy to provide an eighth of the worlds oil going forward. Considering the IEA figures conventional crude has already peaked, I'd love to hear about this mythical technology that will ride in on a white stallion and save the day.

[mikey_the_redneck]

Smells like dis-information.....

There is plenty of oil. If/when the price of oil rises sharply, it will be the result of tension in the middle east imo. The current concern is the potential disruption of oil traffic through the Suez Canal.

[TylerSVT]

Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck

Smells like dis-information.....

There is plenty of oil. If/when the price of oil rises sharply, it will be the result of tension in the middle east imo. The current concern is the potential disruption of oil traffic through the Suez Canal.

+1,

Opec still controls the price by withholding supply. No one is running at max capacity for extraction right now.

[GGG]

The biggest thing that limits us from running out of oil is that as the price goes up alternative energy becomes viable. So as long as the price increase is over 50 years and not 5 years alternatives can be found and implemented without disrupting our energy supply too much.

Proven current technology would have us go to nuclear / electric cars although other tech will come on steam as we move forward. The problem with peak oil is that they assume that oil is the only form of energy available and fail to account the new tech that will be developed as the price rises.

Although long term Multivac will need to figure out how to reverse entropy to solve peak energy when the unverse runs out.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

I could care less about the formatting of a book compared to the overall message. Don't put too much faith in a monarchy to provide an eighth of the worlds oil going forward.

Dude, his overall message in the book is "We don't know" and draws conclusions from it. He doesn't have any concrete evidence that we've hit peak oil and his entire argument is speculation.

[Mr.Coffee]

I've read Twilight in the Desert too. While what Caramon says is more or less what I believe too, I also think the general principle of the book acting as a warning to maybe re-think what OPEC tells us to be a pretty good one.

The thing about peak oil arguments that I've always wondered about, is that they never seem to take into account technological innovations. Or if they do try, there is no possible way to know what we will be able to achieve in 10 years time with new drilling, completion, primary / secondary / tertiary recovery methods (or are there ones not even invented yet?). Or are there still monster pools of oil not discovered yet in the oceans or harder to reach places?

I just dunno, and nobody does.

And at the end of the day, the faster $200/bbl comes, the better for so many gas producers as governments and consumers turn up the heat on natural gas as a cleaner and incredibly vast supply already prepared for consumption in North America.

We need more reasons to use more natural gas. The environment and sustainable development included.

[Yasa]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

I read a book on this called Twilight in the Desert.

I kinda pegged your for a Twilight fan.

[Pinner]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

And at the end of the day, the faster $200/bbl comes, the better for so many gas producers as governments and consumers turn up the heat on natural gas as a cleaner and incredibly vast supply already prepared for consumption in North America.

We need more reasons to use more natural gas. The environment and sustainable development included.

Natgas as a transportation fuel is the answer, super cheap, clean and we have more Natgas than we can burn. Natgas is available in Calgary 24/7. All the City vehicles, cabs, fleets should be switching over. North America should be making the switch IMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle

[Cowboy89]

[QUOTE=Pinner;2960715]Natgas as a transportation fuel is the answer, super cheap, clean and we have more Natgas than we can burn. Natgas is available in Calgary 24/7. All the City vehicles, cabs, fleets should be switching over. North America should be making the switch IMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle [QUOTE]

Natural Gas is all cool until you want to park your vehicle underground at a 'Nenshi dream' TOD tower, or until you want to start your car outside in -30 weather.

There's a reason Encana has Nat gas fuel stations for their own fleet in Texas / Louisiana but not in northeastern BC.

[bizaro86]

[QUOTE=Cowboy89;2961011]

Originally Posted by Pinner

There's a reason Encana has Nat gas fuel stations for their own fleet in Texas / Louisiana but not in northeastern BC.

Cenovus (formerly part of EnCana) has natural gas trucks in Pelican Lake, ~4 hours north of Edmonton.

http://www.imw.ca/news/story.php?Cen...elican-Lake-20

[FlameOn]

Nat gas is used in lots of Asian cities like Hong Kong for their public vehicle and taxi fleets... much cheaper and works well for them. They don't park any vehicles indoors there since its so fricking hot there anyways

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Natural Gas is all cool until you want to park your vehicle underground at a 'Nenshi dream' TOD tower, or until you want to start your car outside in -30 weather.

There's a reason Encana has Nat gas fuel stations for their own fleet in Texas / Louisiana but not in northeastern BC.

Natural gas is lighter than air, so no reason you can't park underground.

I believe the Bow will have a natural gas filling station (likely under ground).

The problem with NGV's is the range is terrible and they have no power. To make a semi that can haul at all they need to use a diesel hybrid system.

[Pinner]

The fuel systems are usually duel fuel, meaning they can use gasoline on the few "very" cold days for a very small percentage of N.America. Totally insignificant to the big picture.

If propane works in the very cold why couldn't natgas ?

Range ? What, you can't fill up a little more often or lose some trunk space.

Power, our vehicles have lots of power, way more than we need.

Diesel/Propane hybrid for trucks has been around for years.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Pinner

The fuel systems are usually duel fuel, meaning they can use gasoline on the few "very" cold days for a very small percentage of N.America. Totally insignificant to the big picture.

If propane works in the very cold why couldn't natgas ?

Range ? What, you can't fill up a little more often or lose some trunk space.

Power, our vehicles have lots of power, way more than we need.

Diesel/Propane hybrid for trucks has been around for years.

Duel fuel: Sweet I can't wait to see LNG smack gasoline across it's stupid smug face with a pair of gloves.

Silly comments aside I agree with your other poitns and want to point out that using compressed natural gas (mostly methane) as opposed to straight propane would actually be better in cold weather as methane vapourizes at a much lower temp than propane. That's the problem with propane, if it's cold enough, it won't vapourize fast enough to run an engine even at atmospheric pressure.

[Bill Bumface]

How many of you would think LNG vehicles were a good idea if it wasn't going to make your stocks go up?

I hope everyone else uses them, I don't want one.