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109 comments on Shedding Light on the Question of Reserves Growth
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Dick, the USGS has, in about the first paragraph of the executive summary of the 2000 World Assessment, the following description of what their numbers are...and I quote...."potential to be added to existing reserves".
They don't say..."for a given discovery profile", or "for a flat discovery profile", they say POTENTIAL, which strikes me as a hedge against ever seeing the entire amount mentioned, for WHATEVER reason.
Within potential I imagine economics comes into play, if everyone is driving EV's and there is not much demand for crude, there won't be much of an incentive to discover ANYTHING, let alone an imaginary profile within a given timeframe.
Also, the USGS numbers don't come anywhere close to a "total petroleum endowment", no way, no how. They specifically excluded all unconventional plays during their assessments ( at the World level anyway ). That small fact means that their numbers are guarenteed to be low. Not optimistic, or high, but when talking about global endowment, low.
As usual this seems to fit into the style of politically expedient pronouncements instead of sound technical judgments.
I suppose the POTENTIAL was there in the 1850's for the passenger pigeon population to continue on indefinitely, yet it didn't turn out that way.
Too bad I have to phrase it that way, but no way, no how, would I want to see this discussion fall into some safe expedient realm where you never look at the worst-case scenario.
I suppose the POTENTIAL was there in the 1850's for the passenger pigeon population to continue on indefinitely, yet it didn't turn out that way.
Quite right. And I imagine the history of oil will be different in the future than we can imagine today as well. Like...we won't use as much, and alot of what is in the ground will forever remain in the ground.