OIL NOT PEAKING…

No Peak in Oil Before 2030, Study Says
Jad Mouawad, November 17, 2009 (NY Times)

"Few topics can inflame oil watchers more than the debate over “peak oil” – that difficult-to-predict moment when the world’s oil production reaches its highest level before beginning a long and irreversible path of decline.

"In recent years, ominous warnings about peaking production have gained some prominence among traders and some analysts. They helped explain why oil prices soared last year on fears that oil supplies would fail to catch up with the projected growth in consumption."

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"A retired geologist predicted, wrongly it turned out, that global oil production would peak on Thanksgiving Day, 2005. Others believe that the peak in production will happen from 2011 to 2015…[The Future of Global Oil Supplies: Understanding the Building Blocks , from Daniel Yergin’s IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates] once again explains why it believes that oil supplies will keep growing for the next two decades. After that, the firm says, production will reach “an undulating plateau,” meaning it will remain more or less flat for a couple more decades after that.

"The report…shows how oil supplies will reach 115 million barrels a day around 2030, up from 92 million barrels today...[and] remain at that level through 2050. (The report sets a lower peak level than in recent years, IHS said, because the recession had led companies to reduce their investments and demand is not expected to rise as high as previously thought.)…"

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"…[A]nalysts at IHS said they have coaxed production data from more than 450 fields around the world…[and] found that the average decline rate in oil fields is 4.5 percent…[that] 60 percent of world production still comes from nearly 550 so-called giant fields that are not in danger of suddenly plummeting; and finally, the world’s oil endowment is much bigger than many estimates about peak oil allow for.

"The ultimate point of the report, said Peter Jackson, the study’s main author, was to point out that while geological issues are important, future oil production will be mostly driven by [decisions in the oil industry about investment for development]…This analysis of these risks parallels what many executives have been warning: that limited opportunities to invest in new supplies could lead to an oil shock in the next decade…"