Deffeyes - Hubbert's Peak (2001) - Synopsis

UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper: March 7, 2005. Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001). Preface to the Paperback Edition. Henry Groppe: 2000 will likely be the year of greatest global oil production (ix). Acknowledgments. “Financial support for this work came from TIAA/CREF” (xi).

Ch. 1: Overview. M. King Hubbert’s 1956 prediction of U.S. peak oil in early 1970s came true (1-4). “Since 1971, we have been dependent on OPEC” (5). Oil “reserves”: “future production, using existing technology, from wells that have already been drilled” (6). Official calm at OPEC and majors as peak oil approaches (7-8). No way to avoid the peak: “it is too late to reverse the trend” (8-10). Recommendation: “bet that the prediction is roughly correct. Planning for increased energy conservation and designing alternative energy sources should begin now” (11). This book: “an explanation of the origin, exploration, production, and marketing of oil” (11). Author a lifelong oil man [born circa 1931 (18-19)] (12-13). Ch. 2: The Origin of Oil. Oil originates from strata. tens of feet thick (14-18). “Cracking” into oil with equal numbers of odd and even carbon chains (“mature” source rock) occurs in the “oil window,” at over 7,500 ft. depth, in general; beyond 15,000 ft. yields natural gas (18-22). Oil seeps or wells define “oil country”; otherwise expensive exploration is needed (22-23). Perhaps oil source rocks come from marine layers that alternate between being nutrient traps (forming sapropels) and nutrient deserts (24-27). Temperature signatures to recognize the oil window (27-30). Hotspot trails as the explanation for “freeboarding” (30-31). Unexplained problems with “activation energy” in the official story of how oil is formed (31-37). Lack of organic-rich source rocks or no evidence of source rocks being in the oil window is enough to cause the oil companies to give up searching for oil in a location (37-39). Ch. 3: Oil Reservoirs and Oil Traps. The anticlinal theory of oil, “the first intellectual idea behind oil exploration” (40). Subtle oil traps (41). Anecdote about visiting Chinese petroleum geologists and the CIA (41-43). Effect of flowing water (43-44). Angular unconformities: the 1930 East Texas field (44-46). Faults, leaky and not (46-47). Salt domes (47-49). Meteor scars (49). Stratigraphic (“strat”) traps, including reefs, hardest to find (49-51). Porosity and permeability (51-54). The darcy, unit of permeability, named after French scientist Henri Darcy of Dijon (54). Petroleum reservoir rocks are sandstones or carbonates, generally: sandstones (54-56); carbonates (57-64). Cap rocks (64-67). Many

things can go wrong; “Deffeyes’ Rule: if even one thing goes wrong, you get a dry hole” (67-69). Ch. 4: Finding It. Surface exploration of the earth largely complete 40 years ago (70-71). Data from wells is made public “by a longstanding custom . . . in some states, regulations” (71). Drill chips (71-72). Foraminifera (“forams”) (72-73). Electrical measurements; Schlumberger; Gus Archie (73-78). Gravity measurements (78). Seismic waves (78-87). Ch. 5: Drilling Methods. Cable tools (88-89). Rotary rigs (89). Pressure in rocks (89-90). Overpressure (90-98). Hughes’s rotating toothed cone drill bits (98). Mud pumps to take advantage of Bernoulli effect (98-100). Surface casing (100-01). Oil and gas fires (101). Conventions about “completion” cost (102). Drill stem test (102). Well completion (103-04). Pumping (104). Recovery rates and how to improve them (105-08). Pipelines (108). Technical innovations: diamond compact bit; coiltubing rigs; directional and horizontal drilling (108-12). Ch. 6: Size and Discoverability of Oil Fields. Evidence that random drilling would have discovered oil fields more efficiently (113-17). The “total ‘real’ oil field production”: “oil fields bigger than 2 billion barrels contain more than half of the existing oil. I expect that an extremely intensive program of future drilling would, at most, lower that midpoint to 1 billion barrels” (116-24). Pattern of discovery: “major oil provinces were identified fairly early, but some pleasant surprises came along later in North Africa and the North Sea” (124). Middle Eastern oil, “very likely the largest untapped supply in the world” (124-28). (“In stages from 1976 to 1980, Saudi Arabia nationalized Aramco, but the company as an entity continued. In contrast, in Iraq and Iran, nationalization was accomplished by ejecting the former consortium that operated oil exploration and production” (126).) North Sea oil (128-30). World’s most productive single oil well, uncertain (131-32). Ch. 7: Hubbert Revisited. M. King Hubbert (133-34). USGS (134). Hubbert’s prediction (134-36). How the bell-shaped curve could be invalidated (136-69). Critical examination of Hubbert’s model; Gaussian curve works best (139-44). Production data (144-46). Different assumptions yield peaks from 2003 to 2009 (14649). “I honestly do not have an opinion as to the exact date” (149). “No initiative put in place starting today can have a substantial effect on the peak production year” (149).

Ch. 8: Rate Plots. Analogy to the mathematics of population growth (150-51). The problem of estimating future discoveries (151-53). Choice of mathematical models: Gaussian or logistic? (153). Examination of USGS estimates for U.S. and global production are “implausibly high” (154-57). “The mathematical peak falls at the year 2004.7; call it 2005” (158). Ch. 9: The Future of Fossil Fuels. Republican (individuals, institutions) vs. Democrat (society) approach (159-60). The changing behavior and role of oil companies (160-64). Oil for petrochemical products (164-66). Tertiary recovery methods (166-70). Natural gas (17073). Coal (173-74). “The finite supply of world oil is, in my opinion, written in stone . . . in the reservoir rocks” (175). Ch. 10: Alternative Energy Sources. Geothermal energy (176-80). Nuclear energy (180-82). Hydroelectric power (182-83). Solar and wind power (183-85). “We need an open

competition to propose detailed implementations of each concept, followed by another competition to look for serious flaws in the designs” (185). Ch. 11: A New Outlook. The coming “psychological realization that the change is permanent may be as devastating as the shortage itself” (186). Cautionary remarks about solutions (187-89). Need for awareness and education in thermodynamics (189-90). Notes. 14 pages. Ch. 8, note 4 (p. 201): Hubbert, M.K. (1982), “Techniques of Prediction as Applied to the Production of Oil and Gas,” in Oil and Gas Supply Modeling, ed. S.J. Gass, National Bureau of Standards Special Publication 631, pp. 16141. Equations. Index. 4 pages. Back of the book. Deffeyes is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University; worked with M. King Hubbert in Shell Oil’s research lab in Houston. Princeton since 1967. Served as guide/mentor to John McPhee’s popular books on geology.. Basin and Range (1980), In Suspect Terrain (1982), Rising from the Plains (1986), and Assembling California (1993; dedicated to Deffeyes), known collectively as Annals of the Former World.