## Kuwait Researchers Forecast Global Conventional Crude Oil Production Will Peak in 2014; New Multicyclic Hubbert Model

##### 10 March 2010
 World crude oil production model. Credit: ACS, Nashawi et al. Click to enlarge.

Scientists from Kuwait University and Kuwait Oil Company are forecasting that world conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014—almost a decade earlier than some other predictions. Their study is in published the ACS journal Energy & Fuels.

Ibrahim Nashawi and colleagues point out that rapid growth in global oil consumption has sparked a growing interest in predicting “peak oil”—the point at which oil production reaches a maximum and then declines. Scientists have developed several models to forecast this point, and some put the date at 2020 or later. The Hubbert forecast model—one of the most famous—accurately predicted that oil production would peak in the United States in 1970. The model has since gained in popularity and has been used to forecast oil production worldwide. However, recent studies show that the model is insufficient to account for more complex oil production cycles of some countries. Those cycles can be heavily influenced by technology changes, politics, and other factors, the scientists say.

The new study describes the development of a new version of the Hubbert model that accounts for these individual production trends to provide a more realistic and accurate oil production forecast.

Even though forecasting should be handled with extreme caution, it is always desirable to look ahead as far as possible to make an intellectual judgment on the future supplies of crude oil. Over the years, accurate prediction of oil production was confronted by fluctuating ecological, economical, and political factors, which imposed many restrictions on its exploration, transportation, and supply and demand. The objective of this study is to develop a forecasting model to predict world crude oil supply with better accuracy than the existing models.

Even though our approach originates from Hubbert model, it overcomes the limitations and restrictions associated with the original Hubbert model. As opposed to Hubbert single-cycle model, our model has more than one cycle depending on the historical oil production trend and known oil reserves. The presented method is a viable tool to predict the peak oil production rate and time. The model is simple, accurate, and totally data driven, which allows a continuous updating once new data are available.

—Nashawi et al.

Using the new model, the scientists evaluated the oil production trends of 47 major oil-producing countries, which supply most of the world’s conventional crude oil—essentially, every country around the globe that has a proven oil reserves higher than 0.468 BSTB (billion stock tank barrels). They also classified the countries into OPEC and non-OPEC countries. Among their findings:

• The world’s ultimate crude oil reserve is estimated to be 2,140 BSTB

• Remaining recoverable oil is 1,161 BSTB

• World production is estimated to peak in 2014 at a rate of 79 MMSTB/D.

• OPEC has remaining reserve of 909 BSTB, which is about 78% of the world reserves. OPEC production is expected to peak in 2026 at a rate of 53 MMSTB/D.

• Non-OPEC countries have already reached their peak production of 39.6 MMSTB/D in 2006. According to the analysis, the ultimate reserve of these countries is 819 BSTB and their future recoverable oil is 252 BSTB. Non-OPEC countries hold 22% of the world crude oil reserves, which are being depleted at an annual rate of 5.6%.

• On the basis of 2005 world crude oil production and current recovery techniques, the world oil reserves are being depleted at an annual rate of 2.1%.

Despite the current world economical crisis, the authors speculate that OPEC will remain the main world supplier of crude oil up to the end of this century.

Resources

• Ibrahim Sami Nashawi, Adel Malallah and Mohammed Al-Bisharah (2010) Forecasting World Crude Oil Production Using Multicyclic Hubbert Model. Energy Fuels, Article ASAP doi: 10.1021/ef901240p

These drawings of global peak oil graphs that show a sudden and sharp drop in the production of oil after the peak are pure fantasy that disregards basic economics about supply and demand.

Sure at some point there will be a peak as the earth’s oil reserves are finite. However, the global peak will be followed by price increases that enable previously non-economic reserves to be economically exploited. That will go one and as a consequence it will be a slow prolonged decline in oil supply at steadily increasing oil prices. At some point alternatives will start to expand rapidly (for example, the invention of inexpensive lithium batteries at 150 USD per kWh) and after that the supply of oil may drop sharply towards zero.

To conclude, the sky will not fall down and nobody will have to queue at the gas station but gas will gradually be more expensive. In fact the rise of oil prices from 2003 from its level of 30 USD per barrel may be interpreted as the beginning of a global peak oil situation because prices simply needed to go further up in order for oil companies to be able to make money producing more oil. Before 2003 it was possible to increase production at 30 USD and still be profitable. This is no longer the case as the marginal cost of oil drilling is increasing every year now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brent_Spot_monthly.svg

That would probably be a bad thing. I know the knee-jerk reaction for many left-ists in the forum would be to give more tax-credit incentives for purchasing electric vehicles.. but i would caution you to say that the only true way to achieve long-term success is by providing ample research dollars to build a better battery (or fuel cell, ultracap, etc.).. not just make the current ones cheaper.

Picking the 'date' for 'conventional Peak Oil' is as useful as medieval theologians discussing how many angels, can dance on the head of a pin.

There are enormous amounts of 'unconventional' oil available to last for centuries if not Millenia. Ther si lotsof undiscovered, 'conventional oil', too.

The Canadian oil sands, the USA shale oils, the Brazilian deep sea oils, and even synthetic and manufactured bio-fuels, are all unconventional oils, as is GTL and CTL conversions.

Canadian say there is more recoverable oil in the tar sands than in the Mideast. And the US shale reserves dwarf th Canadian Tar Sands.

Hugo Chavez' regime sits on the enormous 'heavy oil' reserves of the Orinoco, but without someone to help the buffoon get it out, it will sit there until that socialist ass joins Edi Amin in the dust bowl of history.

More propaganda to scare us, and help mainain the ridiculous prices for a resource that si artificially way over the price of production and normal profit, and has been for forty years now.

I predicted late 2012 but this sounds about right. I agree that it will not be a steep decline. I figured we would peak this side of 100 million barrels per day and demand would keep rising. It may not be the end point so much as what happens between now and then, be prepared.

Wasn't it announced here recently that peak oil had already occurred, in November of 2008 or so?

I suspect 'peak oil' is a lot like 'global warming'; something that will forever be just around the corner, and forever avoidable only by giving research grants and seed money to the usual suspects.

"2014—almost a decade earlier than some other predictions"
LOL

I'm with those that think the back end of the curve will not look like the before peak front half. Where we have seen the back end of the curve already (e.g. the continental USA) there has always been other sources of oil to keep the price down. We've never seen a global peak before. If the curve does look the same then it will most likely be due to resource switching.

A) Will higher prices, increasing demands and declining reserves provoke peak oil production?

or/

B) Will lower cost alternative cleaner energies, e-vehicles & machines progressively reduce demand for fossil fuels and provoke peak oil production?

Historically, major changes did not come about because the world ran out of the previously used commodity. We did not run out of horses and buggies, we progressively switched to ICE vehicles for many other reasons. We did not stop to smoke because we ran out of tobacco, etc.

I'm in favour of B) and a progressive transition out of liquid fossil fuels in favour of other much cleaner, lower cost energies. The second electrification revolution (2010-2030+) may be responsible for for peak oil production thru reduced demands.

The frowth of Wind and Solar energies will surprise many.

correction.

last line should read...The growth of

Like always mister Stan Peterson likes to BS on things he knows nothing about. Worse he hasn't even bothered to look at some data that are available (like the price of extraction of Tar sands for example) . Please bring yours data that there is oil for Millenia or centuries or that 80$is a ridiculous price for oil when it cost 60$ to produce a barrel of syncrude from Tar sands.

To all the idiots who think that peak oil is a fantasy of Cassandra, they should look at the history of production of oil in US over the past 100 years. And for the same idiots, let me remind them that in 1955 Kings Hubbert heard the same idiocies, as wrote above, of peak oil skeptics when he presented his theory, but at the end he was proven right...

Believe me when when we will massively replace conventional oil by unconventional oil, the world will look a lot different, better hope that we will not have to do that transition and that we find something else instead.

It seems like there will continue to be strong world demand for oil past 2020, which is only 10 years away. Many oil fields are in decline but others are being discovered, there will be a peak and decline, but the decline will not be as steep as shown ...IMO.

Since the price of all kinds of alternatives to conventional oil keeps to come down and the price to produce conventional and unconventional oil will increase (partly due to inclusion of the price for pollution), simple economics will soon cause 'peak oil'.

Harvey

This simplistic theory that we will always find a new resource to replace a vanishing one might be true for oil whale that have been replaced by crude oil or wood by coal, problem : we were all confident that coal was being phased out in the 70 because its production had been down for more than 40years, even with the introduction of nuclear coal production has bounced back and increased steadily in the 40 past years to level never achieved before and it is clear now that nuclear will not displace coal in any reasonable period of time if ever. But it is always amuzing to see that one can BS a solid proven theory as Hubbert's one by shaky and unproven theory...

their curve is for conventional oil only, consensus in the oil industry is that unconventional oil production will be about 10MBd in 2030 so can maintain the whole thing flat for some time as best. Yes natural gas and liquefied coal might fill the gap until mid century, but development cost will be a serious issue in heavily indebted countries like the whole industrialized world is moving to...

To summarize: Treehugger has it right. All of you who criticized this report by claiming 'high prices will bring unconventional oil to the market' failed to read the first line; "Scientists from Kuwait University and Kuwait Oil Company are forecasting that world conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014—almost a decade earlier than some other predictions." Unconventional oil is a separate issue. Yes, rising prices MAY make alternate sources of oil more profitable but only because rising prices of conventional oil will make ALL alternate sources of energy more profitable and, as Alain pointed out, "since the price of all kinds of alternatives to conventional oil keeps to come down and the price to produce conventional and unconventional oil will increase (partly due to inclusion of the price for pollution), simple economics will soon cause 'peak oil'."

Furthermore, It would seem to me that as the price of fuel goes up people find alternatives to "driving" itself (http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/03/epa-inventory-20100309.html#more), which lowers the demand, which oil companies can only meet by lowering prices, which is something they can't do if the actual COSTS of getting the oil goes up because they are now getting more of it from unconventional sources which are only profitable at higher prices. Or am I missing something?

Unconventional oil reserves will only be viable at high oil prices, thus peak oil is about the end of cheap oil, heck at $4 a gallon of gasoline it becomes profitable to make gasoline from coal via gasification and F-T synthesis. Obviously Unconventional oil will have to compete against biofuels and electrics which will allow cleaner and perhaps cheaper alternatives, economics will thus push for alternative energy on it own. Tree... Could conventional oil (+ other fossil fuels) go the same way as whale oil, wood, etc did as a source of unsustainable energy? Eventually, the world will turn to cleaner sustainable type energies such as Sun, Wind, Hydro, Geothermal, etc. The transition has already started and will gain speed in the next 2 or 3 decades. A complete transition to sustainable sources may take 60+ years. Meanwhile, we shall have mix sources, including nuclear. ai vin Right, unconventional oil production is only 2Mbd today despite big reserves so it is not tomorrow that unconventional will make a difference, the price has to stay steady above 100$/b for unconventional oil to really ramp up. So we will have to go through some oil crunch before we really start seriously to extract unconventional oil.

Ben
Yes but it would be naive to think that even with a gas price at 4$/Gallon that the development of alternatives solutions would make a dent in oil consumption. Oil is 40% of the energy mix of our civilization and 95% of the whole transportation. The amount of energy that oil provides is enormous that makes the finding of an alternative one of the biggest challenge that humanity has ever faced. development Liquified gas, liquified coal, electric car, H2, unconventional oil require daunting amount of money. The problem is that when oil becomes more expensive everything becomes more expensive including the transition to alternative solutions. Again keep in mind that it is diificult to replace a high quality energy (conventional oil) by a low quality energy (unconventional oil) the most affordable and efficient solution is energy conservation, but nobody wants to hear about it, so conflict of interests will dominate the oil decline problem. Part of the solution of a problem is first to admit that we have a problem...obviously when it comes to "peak oil" we fail to admit it so how could we possibly solve it ? Harvey That's the best scenario, but the failed nuclear transition and the return of king coal in the 70s tells us that it is not that easy to move away from fossil energy, we can be optimistic because we started to install windmills in a large scale and the trends seems robust but there are still tiny percentage of our energy mix so way too early to claim victory. As for the solar, the trend hasn't even started, the energy produced by the Si cells that individual put on their roof, barely offset the input energy to make the cell. All this clean renewable energies will be of little help if we don't combine them with drastic energy conservation strategy. Moving the car fleet to electric will require to double the electricity production, that's a formidable effort, and I am not sure ewe can afford it. Harvey That's the best scenario, but the failed nuclear transition and the return of king coal in the 70s tells us that it is not that easy to move away from fossil energy, we can be optimistic because we started to install windmills in a large scale and the trends seems robust but there are still tiny percentage of our energy mix so way too early to claim victory. As for the solar, the trend hasn't even started, the energy produced by the Si cells that individual put on their roof, barely offset the input energy to make the cell. All this clean renewable energies will be of little help if we don't combine them with drastic energy conservation strategy. Moving the car fleet to electric will require to double the electricity production, that's a formidable effort, and I am not sure ewe can afford it. Like the rest of you, I will toss in my guess -- since that is all any of us really have. 2014 sounds reasonable. Based on innovation development cycles, at least one MIT type predicted three years ago that we were 4 to 5 years away from solar energy being as cheap as fossil fuel generated power. (Oil was about the same price as now at the time.) Once we reach that point, the incentive to explore and drill for oil becomes less. Yes, it will take some time to transition, but oil production is likely to begin a decline. Price may not spike as expected, if there are alternatives. Tree..... Wind power alone (with todays technologies) could double current USA/Canada e-power production. Sun power could do many times more, specially when solar panels or future converters efficiency reach 50% and cost goes down under$1/Kw.

Those two major sources of future sustainable energy are in their infancy days and will mature gradually during the next 20/30 years or so. By 2030/2050 they may have already replaced coal as major energy source and NG & Nuclear a few decades latter.

I doubt that e-energy usage will decrease over many coming decades. On the contrary, it may increase substantially as we embark on the second electrification revolution. Producing (2x) or even (5x) times more will not be a major challenge. Look how quickly China is changing its massive industrial production. It could do the same for sustainable energy production.

Whether 2014 is the exact date is trivial. When the world runs on oil, when oil production drops, and prices rise, the economies of the world will sink again. \$80/bbl is still a little too high to successfully recover from the previous oil price shock.

We're in for a new normal. In the 1950s US, they thought they lived like kings on very modest incomes (in comparison to today's income). Prepare for a return to such an income level....or lower.

Will

that's the problem that Harvey has problem to understand, it is not because something is technically possible that it will be economically feasible. Like you say if peak oil happen in 2014 the economy will tank and we , industrialized countries, are already heavily indebted, then how will we be able to manage such a transition? like yo say we might need to go through a downsizing first before these renewable energy revolution happen, and even I doubt that wind and solar can keep pace with the energy growth we have been used to during these 50 past years. You need more than 2000 giants wind mill to offset a single coal or nuclear power plant,the amount of concrete only is 10 times more than what you need to build a nuclear plant, not mentioning the huge amount of cables you need to connect these windmills. To power our civilization with wind and solar requires infrastructures that are mind blowing by their sheer astronomical dimensions.

@Treehugger
Your statement that "the energy produced by the Si cells that individual put on their roof, barely offset the input energy to make the cell" is out of date;
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

Treehugger:

"the energy produced by the Si cells that individual put on their roof, barely offset the input energy to make the cell."

"Moving the car fleet to electric will require to double the electricity production,..."

I'm afraid you're way off on both of these counts. Energy payback varies considerably from one cell technology to another, but even crystalline silicon cells--the most energy intensive production process--pays back in most cases well under two years, versus a waranteed lifetime of 25 years.

As for the increase in electricity production to accommodate electric vehicles, several studies have shown that it's a surprisingly small increase relative to "business as usual" (i.e. no EVs) scenario. For instance, the study published by Oak Ridge National Lab, and available at http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v41_1_08/regional_phev_analysis.pdf evaluated impacts of plug-in hybrids in 2020 and 2030. Modeling the impacts of 19.45 million PHEVs on the grid in 2020 and 50.04 million in 2030, the researchers found the incremental electricity generation amounted to less than 1.2 percent 2020 and about 2.7% in 2030.

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