ATE will come from.
Recently this author attended a trade conference concerning “unconventional resources”. “Unconventional resources” is another way of saying “difficult to produce at a high rate, but prevalent in a given area”. For the most part, it’s what we’re left with, especially in the
With respect to oil production RATE (which is what Peak Oil is all about), he may as well have been showing a map of coal resources.
What he didn’t explain was the fact that
The Canadian tar sands producers have a roadmap for increasing the production RATE from those huge RESERVES to a total of ... 3 million barrels per day, by 2015! That’s an increase of only another 1.9 million barrels per day, but over 7 years, and with additional tens of billions of dollars injected!
So, that huge amount of RESERVES is limited in RATE because it is of the poorest QUALITY.
To put this in perspective and show why it is important - why Peak Oil is important - take a look at the second largest field in the world, Cantarell, in
Compare this with the Canadian tar sands production increase of only 1.9 million barrels per day over 7 years - after a huge incremental effort. Factor in the depletion going on in most every field around the world – and you have an idea of the problem at hand, and a better understanding of Peak Oil. Among other things, huge RESERVES of poor QUALITY oil are not going to be able to provide the RATE of production necessary to stem the declines from the giant high QUALITY fields that are now old in AGE, much less continue to increase our total RATE.
In summary, Peak Oil is about RATE. And RATE is dependent on the SIZE, AGE and QUALITY of the RESERVES.