Gallery of World Hydrocarbon Endowment & Shale Gas Resources
The first two charts -- of global hydrocarbon endowment and US hydrocarbon endowment -- come from Gary Swindell Petroleum Engineering in Dallas, TX.
The next 4 maps come from an Autumn 2011 article in Oil Field Review (PDF)
The last two graphs provide two more cautious estimates of the global hydrocarbon resource -- one including renewable fuels and the approximate costs of production using today's technology.
The purpose of such graphic resource estimates is to provide a visual impact beyond what mere numbers often provide.
The very generous Swindell estimates on top come with several sources, provided at the link. The source of the shale gas maps data is listed on the maps. The data in the next to the last chart above is taken from BP estimates, and the data in the last one is taken from IEA sources.
Keep in mind that resource estimates are not proven reserves, but are rather a guesstimate of where future technologies may eventually lead based upon best available data. Proven reserves have always risen, and continue to do so as discoveries and new technologies warrant.
It should be easy to see from the charts how important liquefaction technologies (GTL, CTL, BTL etc) will become over the next few decades. As abundant and cheap process heat from advanced modular nuclear reactors becomes available, such liquefaction processes will come into their own, economically.
The very generous Swindell estimates on top come with several sources, provided at the link. The source of the shale gas maps data is listed on the maps. The data in the next to the last chart above is taken from BP estimates, and the data in the last one is taken from IEA sources.
Keep in mind that resource estimates are not proven reserves, but are rather a guesstimate of where future technologies may eventually lead based upon best available data. Proven reserves have always risen, and continue to do so as discoveries and new technologies warrant.
It should be easy to see from the charts how important liquefaction technologies (GTL, CTL, BTL etc) will become over the next few decades. As abundant and cheap process heat from advanced modular nuclear reactors becomes available, such liquefaction processes will come into their own, economically.
Labels: unconventional hydrocarbons
posted by al fin at
2:20 PM
2 Comments:
Is the EROEI taken into account by whether it is worthwhile to drill in oil and gas deposits by oil companies or do they use a different method? Cause thats seems to be a common doomer argument that the EROEI for unconventional oil/gas cannot run our society and is not profitable.
Is this a rhetorical question, given how many times I have answered it before?
Informed persons need to understand that different forms of energy come at different costs and prices.
If you can use a cheaper form of energy to produce a more expensive form of energy, your approach may be sustainable for quite some time, until markets shift, regardless of "EROEI."
That is why gas to liquids (GTL) is earning the Qatar Pearl plant $6 billion a year -- gas is cheap and diesel is expensive.
When high temperature gas cooled modular nuclear reactors become available -- whether from Russia, China, India, the US, Canada, France, or wherever -- we will enter an entire new era of energy substitution.
Because nuclear fuel is relatively cheap and incredibly energy dense. The high quality industrial heat will drive CTL, GTL, BTL, etc. even more cheaply than using natural gas, shifting the EROEI upward.
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