190 PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AND POLITICS
a lower buildup than might be anticipated by summing the reports
of current activity, but operators may not commit to new gas-toliquid projects until there is some certainty that the oil price will
remain high enough for profitability.
The question of a worldwide peak in oil production continues
to stimulate debate, although there is little evidence for a peak in
worldwide oil production before 2020. It is true that total annual
global production has not been replaced by exploration success in
recent years, but production has been more than replaced by exploration plus field reserve upgrades. Although oil is a finite resource,
there is still no exact estimate of total reserves; meanwhile global
resources should continue to expand. Many basins, even those producing significant volumes of oil, remain underexplored.
One of the reasons that there is so much debate over the whether
the peak of oil production is imminent or not is that different
observers rely upon different data sets. The most visible data
are those published by exploration and production companies
through annual reports and the most extensive collection of such
reports are the filings under United States Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC). However, these data may be overly conservative as evidenced by the extent to which upward reserve revisions
outweigh downward revisions.
In fact, it is entirely possible that large portions of discovered
fields maybe excluded from disclosure until later in their producing
lives and that only a small portion of the overall picture is revealed
by these disclosures. As often happens with regulatory systems
that have been in place for three decades, it requires modernization
to take into account almost revolutionary changes in technologies,
and transformations in terms of market structure and geography.
If the SEC were to adopt the definitions and guidelines used
by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), this would lead to
the creation of a globally consistent data set that covered the vast
majority of the world's oil and gas reserves. As the very definition
of what is oil begins to change with the addition of non-traditional
resources such as synthetic crude oil (Syncrude) and gas-to-liquids
and even liquid fuels made from coal, a reliable dataset will be lead
to a better understanding of when the world may face an undulating plateau of global oil production.
Finally, in consideration of the above effects, forecasting crude
oil economic activity has received considerable attention over the
past several decades. An increasing number of statistical methods,
a lower buildup than might be anticipated by summing the reports
of current activity, but operators may not commit to new gas-toliquid projects until there is some certainty that the oil price will
remain high enough for profitability.
The question of a worldwide peak in oil production continues
to stimulate debate, although there is little evidence for a peak in
worldwide oil production before 2020. It is true that total annual
global production has not been replaced by exploration success in
recent years, but production has been more than replaced by exploration plus field reserve upgrades. Although oil is a finite resource,
there is still no exact estimate of total reserves; meanwhile global
resources should continue to expand. Many basins, even those producing significant volumes of oil, remain underexplored.
One of the reasons that there is so much debate over the whether
the peak of oil production is imminent or not is that different
observers rely upon different data sets. The most visible data
are those published by exploration and production companies
through annual reports and the most extensive collection of such
reports are the filings under United States Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC). However, these data may be overly conservative as evidenced by the extent to which upward reserve revisions
outweigh downward revisions.
In fact, it is entirely possible that large portions of discovered
fields maybe excluded from disclosure until later in their producing
lives and that only a small portion of the overall picture is revealed
by these disclosures. As often happens with regulatory systems
that have been in place for three decades, it requires modernization
to take into account almost revolutionary changes in technologies,
and transformations in terms of market structure and geography.
If the SEC were to adopt the definitions and guidelines used
by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), this would lead to
the creation of a globally consistent data set that covered the vast
majority of the world's oil and gas reserves. As the very definition
of what is oil begins to change with the addition of non-traditional
resources such as synthetic crude oil (Syncrude) and gas-to-liquids
and even liquid fuels made from coal, a reliable dataset will be lead
to a better understanding of when the world may face an undulating plateau of global oil production.
Finally, in consideration of the above effects, forecasting crude
oil economic activity has received considerable attention over the
past several decades. An increasing number of statistical methods,