Does the Peak Oil "Myth" Just Fall Down? -- Our Response to CERA

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http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/15/83857/186#more

Important read I believe..


What Figure 3 highlights, which is not found anywhere in the CERA's peak oil "Decision Brief", is their assumption —shared by us— of a 5% decline rate in existing oil production over time. As you can see, what CERA calls the "Upstream Oil Challenge" is a race between bringing new conventional oil production on-stream and declining production in existing oil fields such as Mexico's giant offshore Cantarell field. The assumed global decline rate is crucial. The hard & expensive problem of bringing new oil production on-stream is compounded over time by an exponential decline rate which requires the world to run faster to stay in-place, let alone move forward to meet increasing demand. Moreover, some of the conventional oil CERA is counting on to meet the demand challenge involves fields under appraisal or "yet to find" resources — this is oil that does not yet exist. Of the 3.74 trillion barrels of oil CERA claims remains to be exploited —see section 3 below— 0.758 trillion barrels comes from "exploration potential" ie. it has not yet been discovered but, presumably, is recoverable despite unknown geological, technological and economic constraints on production of a non-existent resource.