GLOBAL FUTURE ANALYSIS
ENERGY | EXPLORATION
In exploration efficiency is the major facet. In the start of the oil industry was only 1 barrel of oil needed to explore 100 barrel of oil. This energy ratio has dropped. Today every 5 barrels of oil requires 1 barrel for exploration. This drop in net result makes energy continuous more expensive. The driving facet behind this figure is that we of course first explorer the easy oil first. Why doing difficult and expensive if it could be done cheap at low cost. This is the huge danger of PeakOil. Reaching the top of production (the first 50%: the first/rising part of the bell curve) is about easy oil, after that what is left (the last 50%: the last/declining part of the bell curve) is difficult (and so expensive) to explore and the energy efficiency with drop each year till it reaches 1 to 2 or something and exploration can not longer be done profitable. In both energy reserve forecasts (PeakOil) and energy price forecasts this logical quick sanding of net energy output and excessively rise of exploration costs are two facets that are heavenly forgotten. When energy ratio's drop to 1 to 2 and/or exploring investment/operation costs are to high energy sources are only theoretically/physically present, but will not contribute one kWh/joule to the global economy. And due the fact that we first have explored the easy sources, we will face huge decline of 1P/2P/3P energy reserves in any energy reserve calculations as we actually will try to harvest much of these reserves. A lot of the hydro carbon energy assets on the global balance sheets we will not be able to harvest them in an economic way. We have been blind and believed in that the delusion we temperately enjoyed was our future, forgetting any economic facet, just living the live we lived. This consumption based/originated blindness for real data is one of the miracles of the 80ties and 90ties.
Author: Gijs Graafland
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