World's Recoverable Oil Reserves Get Another Major Downward Revision

[Economy 52,906]

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-07-17/energy-consultancy-keeps-lowering-worldwide-recoverable-oil-resources/

 

The world's Recoverable Oil Reserves got another major downward revision by 178 Billion Barrels after being revised down last year by an even greater 282 Billion barrels

 

The world consumes only, 29 to 30 Billion barrels per year, so the majority of the decline had to do with changes in estimates not how much was used up

 

Estimating "in place" oil reserves and then narrowing that down to the "recoverable oil reserves" is a difficult task. There are a lot of variables to take into account for each individual well and oil field meaning the estimates can often be way off and need further revisions over time as oil fields may produce more or less than expected

 

Changes in extraction technology can also change both Technically Recoverable Reserves and Economically Recoverable Reserves in already discovered or operating fields while changes in oil prices can change Economically Recoverable reserves as well changing how much a company will leave behind before moving on to next well

 

As it stands the World's Estimated Proven Oil Reserves stand at just over 1.5 Trillion Barrels or approximately 50 years of current consumption 

[Economy 52,906]

For anyone who doesn't know Oil Reserves terminology here's a quick breakdown

 

"Total Oil Reserves" or "In Place Oil Reserves": Refers to the total estimated amount estimated to exist in a field or well etc regardless of how much of it can actually be extracted.

 

"Technically Recoverable Reserves": Refers to what can be extracted with today's technology. An oil reserve to be Recoverable by this definition does not necessarily need to be economical to extract meaning many technically Recoverable Reserves end up never being Recovered:

 

"Economically Recoverable": Pretty much self explanatory. This is the estimated Oil Reserves that are extractable profitably. Any remaining oil that will cost more to extract than the oil is worth is not considered economically Recoverable reserves and often gets left behind even if it's technically Recoverable

 

Proven Oil Reserves: This is the most used term when referring to oil reserves. It refers to an estimate of Economically Recoverable Reserves that is calculated to be at least 90% likely to be accurate. It is therefore usually a conservative estimate and therefore the totals usually end up being higher than the Proven Reserves figure. But interestingly these are the numbers in the article that got revised down

[Economy 52,906]

@Woolfsmckare u still on GGD? I remember this stuff used to interest u

[berlinforme 5,385]

As it stands the World's Estimated Proven Oil Reserves stand at just over 1.5 Trillion Barrels or approximately 50 years of current consumption. 

That's... not much. Let's hope people are smart enough to find alternatives in time. 

[Dennis 8,391]

Good, especially after Putin started to weaponize this ****, I'm sick of it.

I'm tired of seeing his tactics win. He like, reduces supply, let prices surge, then export less and demand double the payment. Like what the ****...

True energy independence is moving away from fossil fuels altogether

[Economy 52,906]

4 hours ago, berlinforme said:

As it stands the World's Estimated Proven Oil Reserves stand at just over 1.5 Trillion Barrels or approximately 50 years of current consumption. 

That's... not much. Let's hope people are smart enough to find alternatives in time. 

Well... To be fair the world's Proven Recoverable reserves have not often in human history typically been much higher than this...

 

The number of years left tend to continually be extended because total reserves ultimately always end up being much higher due to annual discoveries (although they aren't as high as they used to be, billions of barrels are still discovered every year) and also new technologies tend to improve recovery rates which increase the proven reserves

 

50 years is if nothing changed at all. If consumption doesn't ever come down, if suddenly no new discoveries were ever made again, and if no new breakthrus or improvements in technology to improve recovery was ever made again. Given only about 15% of the world's Oil is considered Recoverable with today's technology (1.5 trillion of 10 trillion in total) there's still huge room for growth there

 

So realistically it would last way longer than 50 years. I think global warming/climate change is still the bigger pressing issue than fossil fuel exhaustion

 

I think Earth would give out completely of an ecological collapse LONG before the reserves out there all got used up tbh

[Economy 52,906]

2 hours ago, Dennis said:

Good, especially after Putin started to weaponize this ****, I'm sick of it.

I'm tired of seeing his tactics win. He like, reduces supply, let prices surge, then export less and demand double the payment. Like what the ****...

True energy independence is moving away from fossil fuels altogether

I wasn't aware they were doing this. I thought Russian Oil was still selling for a slight discount 😳

[Dennis 8,391]

2 hours ago, Economy said:

I wasn't aware they were doing this. I thought Russian Oil was still selling for a slight discount 😳

He's doing it with gas now. But he'll likely do it with oil later this year when the oil embargo/cap kicks in.

[Economy 52,906]

2 hours ago, Dennis said:

He's doing it with gas now. But he'll likely do it with oil later this year when the oil embargo/cap kicks in.

Ah yeah I wouldn't be surprised if they did this at all, I just at first when I read ur comment I thought u were saying they were already doing this and I was like what did I miss lol