Richard Heinberg on the shale oil industry ("fracking" industry)
(The text fragments below are transcripts by me from Richard Heinberg's* speech 2014 in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is on youtube titled "Richard Heinberg on Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future". So the following he said already in the beginning of 2014, almost nine years ago, and the situation is much worse today. This is also some background to the global diesel shortage we have today:)
* the world's most wellknown educator on Peak Oil, who has written ten books on the subject, and fifteen books all in all.
Oil industry in decline
- "1998-2005 the oil industry spent 1,5 trillion dollars in investment in E&P, and it yielded 8,6 mb/d (million barrels per day) in added production.
- 2005-2013 the oil industry spent 4 trillion dollars in investment, and it yielded 3 mb/d in added production.
- There was at the same time 350 billion dollar spent on unconventional oil, responsible for all net production increase."
"The over 3,5 trillion dollars that the industry has invested in conventional oil production, has yielded flat to declining production. So the industry invested 3,5 trillion dollars in producing zero new net oil production from conventional sources. So it's all about unconventionals now. The industry is turning away from investment in conventional oil, because there is not that much more to be found and produced in that category, and turning towards unconventionals."
* * *
- "costs of oil exploration/production is rising 10,9 % per year *
- therefore spending on upstream projects is being cut back."
* Douglas-Westwood
* * *
"The number of US natural gas wells that are operating has increased by 90% since 1990, but the productivity of each well has declined by almost 40 %. Again, this is indication of declining returns on effort."
What a shale bubble looks like
"In 2008, the city of Forth Worth, Texas, received 50 million dollars in revenues from 44 shale gas wells.
In 2012, the city received only 23 million dollars from 397 wells."
* * *
"The overall production decline rate in the Bakken* is about 40 % per year.
The industry has to produce an extra 40 % of oil every year just to stay even."
* one of the largest shale oil plays
* * *
"The unconventionals are more abundant than the conventionals*" (Heinberg speaks about the "resource pyramid", where most of the resource is in the lower half of the pyramid, where beyond a certain point it actually will cost you more to get the stuff out of the ground than the fuel will give you when you burn it.")
* this is some background to Gail Tverberg's statement that "Most fossil fuel reserves will be left in the ground because of low prices", which I wrote about in this blogpost.
