In this analysis, Samuel Foucher (“Khebab”) and I (Tony Eriksen or “ace”) present an update of Wikipedia Megaprojects data. We also provide forecasts of future oil production, reflecting the Megaprojects data. The IEA uses megaprojects in its analysis and we reconcile our Megaprojects information to the data they provide in their report.

A wide variety of methods can be used to forecast future oil production. Each will provide different indications. Sam and I each make projections with megaprojects data, using somewhat different methods. Sam’s projections are shown in Figure 6. My forecasts are shown in Figures 8, 9, and 10. Despite our differing methods, the indications we produce are all substantially lower than the indications of the IEA.

Until quality data about production history, reserves and future development plans including capacities are obtained for fields in secretive OPEC countries, forecasts beyond 2012 are highly uncertain, regardless of the source. While quality data remain unavailable, the world's future energy security, in particular liquid fuels supply security, remains an extremely high risk.

This chart shows the IEA WEO 2008 forecast together with Sam's forecast derived from using Megaprojects sanctioned capacities and yet to be sanctioned capacities (including yet to find oil - YTF). By 2020, the IEA's forecast is significantly greater than Sam's forecast.

Ken Deffeyes, who did so much to bring this current situation to our attention with his writing and books, who has said that he is no longer a prophet, but has become a historian. His remark implies that the much of the debate over peak oil is perhaps over. And there I would disagree with him, because I remain critically concerned, as Euan is, that the world does not really understand the size of the problem that is approaching, and the speed of that arrival. Further the information that controls the shape of the production curve, post peak is usually derived relating to the pattern of the peak in the United States. To anticipate that the world curve will look the same, overlooks the critical difference that, at the present time, there is no satisfactory alternative fuel to satisfy demand. Thus the market imperatives to extract more oil in the immediate short term to meet needs may over-ride more rational concerns about achieving maximum ultimate recovery by producing the oil more slowly. This is a different situation than that which held over the time that the American production plot was developed, and alternate supplies of oil were available from abroad.

Oil production is highly pyramidal and almost half of the world production is coming from less than 3% of the total number of oilfields. Therefore, tracking large oil projects seems like a good approach and it is generally easy to gather good information about a few hundreds of important projects. The most notorious studies are from Chris Skrebowski (ODAC) that has tracked megaprojects since 2004 (see references at the bottom of this post). Initially, only projects that could produce 100 kbpd and more were included. In 2007, the last update included also 40,000 bpd and more. However, forecasted increases in new production capacity have been overly optimistic. So what went wrong? They are many possible causes: demand destruction due to high prices, significant project delays, withheld capacity, larger decline of the resource base, etc..  Having a good estimate of the decline rate of the resource base (Most estimates are ranging between 2 and 6%/year) is fundamental for the precision of supply forecasts derived from megaproject database (see Rembrandt's recent post). Stuart is also looking at this problem here.

Greyzone and others worked a while back to assemble as much data as they could about the largest producing oil fields, their peak year, and whether or not they were in decline, and if so, the decline rate.

I thought I'd repost this as a discussion point, but also to accomplish two other goals: 1) can we expand this to the top 50 fields easily? is that a worthwhile exercise? and 2) is there any more data out there that can fill in the blanks (note that most of the missing data is from SA) that are present?

Here's a link to the data, and here's a link to the original thread that started this all.