Crude oil is by far the most important commodity to humans after water and food.
Having a continuous and affordable supply of oil is considered a basic human right in
this day and age. That is the main reason oil companies are in a constant search of cost
effective ways and technologies that allow for an improved oil recovery rate. This would
improve profitability as well.
What almost everyone knows and dreads at the same time is that oil is an
exhaustible resource. This means that as more oil is being produced every day, the
amount of oil that remains to be produced shrinks even more. With almost all big oil
fields worldwide having already been discovered, the challenge of finding new reserves
grows harder and harder.
A question that has always been asked is âÂÂwhen are we going to run out of
oil?â Given the available technologies and techniques, no one could give an exact
answer and if someone does, he/she would not be 100% sure of that answer. This study
tries to approximate future oil production rates to the year 2050 using the Hubbert
model. There are different models or tools to estimate future oil production rates, but the reason that the Hubbert model was chosen for this study is its simplicity and data
availability.
As any forecast, this study depends heavily on past trends but also factors
in the current conditions. It is safe to say that this forecast (study) is as any other
forecast, in which it will probably not mirror exactly what will happen in the future.
Still, forecasts have to be done, especially for such an important commodity.
This study predicts that the total oil to be recovered is 4.1 trillion barrels. It
also shows that most major oil-producing countries are either passed or about to pass
their peaks.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/5755 |
| Date | 17 September 2007 |
| Creators | Almulla, Jassim M. |
| Contributors | Startzman, Richard A. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | 1292491 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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