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Dr. Herman Franssen, the former chief economist with both the US Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency (IEA), takes the view that it makes sense to consider the prospect that there will be quite different peaks – indeed quite different types of peak – in each of three main producing categories: the non-OPEC world outside the Former Soviet Union (FSU), the FSU itself, and the OPEC countries, particularly the five giant Middle East producers: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

At Lisbon, as well as overviews by leading peak oil advocates, analyses of key producers in all three categories were presented, some of which tended to suggest a slightly later date for overall peaking of all kinds of oil output throughout the world than the conference organizers’ estimate.

 

"The immediate issue is that the International Energy Agency is looking for 86-mil b/d in the last quarter of this year – and there is not 86-mil b/d to be had, because production rates are either static or declining for most producers" - Chris Skrebowski, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre

Colin Campbell, the veteran geologist who is the guru of the peak oil movement, anticipated that actual production of what he calls “regular oil” – a term designed to exclude oil of less than 10° API (ie very heavy), bitumen, oil shales and unconventional oil, as well as conventional oil and gas liquids secured from deepwater reserves below 500 meters, natural gas liquids and coalbed methane – is set to decline from this year on.

Campbell also argued that humanity has now used up roughly half of the available reserves of “regular oil”, assessing a total reserve of 1,850-bil barrels of oil initially in place, of which 944-bil have already been produced, 764-bil remain in known fields and 142-bil are yet-to-find. Campbell estimated that the world is set to produce some 66-mil b/d of regular oil this year – but thereafter faces a decline to about 45-mil b/d in 2020 and to just 20-mil b/d by 2030. While Campbell drew on his geological expertise, Chris Skrebowski, an economist by training and a trustee for the UK-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre which helped set up the conference, based his arguments on analyses of the performance of both public and private oil companies in developing key fields around the world. His conclusion was that peak production for standard conventional oil would probably occur in 2008.

Skrebowski drew attention to the fact that in the first quarter of this year oil companies were commonly accompanying reports of record or near-record profits with disclosures of actual production falls. Skrebowski noted that four of the six major companies – ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, Total and Chevron – reported production falls, that ConocoPhillips reported no change in output level, and that only BP bucked this trend, recording a 2% increase.

Collectively, the Big Six produced 13,526,000 b/d in the first quarter of the year, a 3% fall on the previous quarter. Skrebowski said he feared for the supply-demand balance in Q4 this year. “The immediate issue is that the International Energy Agency is looking for 86-mil b/d in the last quarter of this year – and there is not 86-mil b/d to be had, because production rates are either static or declining for most producers,” Skrebowski told Energy Economist.

Whereas Skrebowski took all forms of oil into account, an obvious problem with Campbell’s analysis was its exclusion of some increasingly important sectors in global oil production, notably deepwater, heavy oil and oil sands. Yet by focusing on what might be considered the cheap and easy end of the production slate, Campbell is, at the very least, making the point that mankind will have to rely increasingly on more expensive forms of oil.