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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (5801)	4/20/2007 2:40:49 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24210

Saudi Arabia's Reserve "Depletion Rates" provide Strong Evidence to Support Total Reserves of 175 Gb with only 65 Gb Remaining Posted by Khebab on April 20, 2007 - 11:05am This a guest post by ace. Summary In Dr. Saleri’s Saudi Aramco presentation on Feb 24, 2004 to the CSIS in Washington, D.C., he stated that Our typical depletion rate is about two percent. However, Aramco’s definition of annual depletion rate is consistently calculated as annual production as a percentage of total reserves. Aramco’s calculation method will be confirmed by the examples below. Data from the presentation is used to convert Aramco's depletion rates into conventional depletion rates which show that conventional maximum depletion rates forAin Dar/Shedgum, Abaiq and Berri are well above 5%/yr. In addition, Aramco's stated depletion rate for Shaybah shows that Aramco believes that Shaybah has up to 20 Gb total reserves. In 2003, assume that Aramco could have produced at an average capacity of 9.5 Mb/day for the entire year. Production reached this level during the Iraq invasion in March 2003. The annual production is 3.5Gb (9.5Mb/d365d(1Gb/1000Mb)). Aramco’s proved reserves are equal to the annual production divided by Aramco’s definition of annual depletion rate. Thus, total reserves are equal to 175Gb (3.5 Gb/2%), which is about half of their stated number of an extremely optimistic 359 Gb. Finally, assuming that total reserves are 175 Gb and that these reserves are produced at a conventional depletion rate of below 5.5%/year, the oil production rate of Saudi Arabia is forecast to Dec 2020. This forecast shows that production follows an exponential decline curve down to 4.5 million barrels/day in Dec 2020 and that it is highly likely that the world's crude oil and lease condensate production has passed a peak of 74.2 million barrels/day on May 2005. ==== Saudi Arabia Production Forecast The actual production and depletion rates (rem) are shown in Fig 4 above. Fig 7 shows a forecast of production to Dec 2020. It is assumed that Aramco will continue to practice good reservoir management and consequently the depletion rate (rem) will not exceed 5.5%/year. If the depletion rate (rem) is kept lower than 5.5%, say at 4.5%/yr, then production rates would probably drop below 8 Mb/d in early 2008 and continue to decline. The forecast shows clearly that Saudi Arabia having its reserves already 63% depleted must increase production decline rates to ensure that reservoirs are not damaged. Themegaprojects shown in the chart are too small to stop the exponential production decline. The reserves of the megaprojects' underlying fields are included in the total reserves of 175 Gb. Furthermore, if the total reserves of Saudi Arabia are truly 175 Gb and Aramco's production is constrained by keeping the depletion rate (rem) under 5.5%, then the world's crude oil and lease condensate production is highly likely to already have passed a peak of 74.2 million barrels/day on May 2005. theoildrum.com