Talk:List of oil fields

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According to this article, The Orinoco Tar sands are said to be the largest in the world Not to dminish the Orinoco deposits in any way but I gather contributors here have not heard of the Athabasca Tar Sands in Canada which are said to contain more oil reserves than any other single source including Saudi Arabia. Anyone know which deposit is the most substantial ? One facility alone is being developed north of Fort McMurray Alberta at this time with a Capex of $30 Billion CAD. Projects currently on the boards for (conservatively) >$100B worth of capital projects between now and 2012. If the Orinoco is bigger that is all well and good, however, what matters is which deposit is most likley to be developed fully? Our money is on Athabasca which is in politically stable, Alberta, Canada (FYI Alberta borders the USA) and not Venezuela where it is anyone's guess what might happen politically. Capital is fluid and generally only goes where it is wanted and is secure. The site is quickly becoming the darling of world oil interests and their capital funding. Google Athabasca Tar Sands or Fort McMurray Alberta and have a peek...

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[edit] Orinoco reserves

The Orinoco oil province in Venezuela contains about 1.7 trillion barrels of oil in place.

These numbers are all over the map. Some seem to be estimated recovery and others are oil in place. I assume others are probably reserve estimates.
For instance the Cantarell feild in Mexico is about 35 billion oil in place with an ultimate recovery of about 50%. So the posted size of 15-23 in this case seems to be ultimate recoverable.
OTOH the Tar Sands have about 1.7-1.8 billion in place with somewhat under 300 billion now classified as reserves.
The data should be sortable two (2) ways: (1) by field size and (2) by current production rates.
For each field the production history should be shown. This will change month to month so whether this is done montly or yearly is an open question. But it would be good to try for monthly.
Next the total oil in place, reserves etc should be shown. Also it should be noted when the estimates were made because changing technology will change this.
We should also show total production to date and an estimate of remaining reserves and remaining oil in place. Some history of the feilds would also be great... and how poorly managed some were. For example the Turner Valley feild south of Calgary had its gas cap flared. Not only was this a criminal was of a none renewable natural resource - it also destroyed the reservoir pressure with the result that probably 80% of the oil has been left behind and it is a hell of a job to get it out.
It would be a good idea to indicate who operates each feild as well. However that becomes rather complex because you can have ownerrship split by well, zone, pool, battery and so on. I once wrote software to do this!
From good numers we can derive decline rates and it would be good to show this graphically.
The date the feild was first discovered and also when it was put on production should also be shown. The discovery record in a play typically follows a log normal distribution so if you organise the data properly then this can be used to forecast the ultimate that will be found in a given play. I know where there is software to do this. But to do it you really need to know each pool involved and when it was found so the data here really needs to be beefed up.
It likely would not be practical to do this. But the CIA has done it in some areas. Which I cannot say because they are too secretive. However I can say I know for sure they were doing this because they had the software even though they wouldn't admit it or even who they were!
If we beef up this page then I expect it will become a major resource and ppl will maintain it because it is such a valuable reference. What is here is a good start but it sure needs work!

[edit] Billion or trillion

1.7 trillion in venezuela!? or is it billion?

Oil reserves are classified into categories - proven, probable and possible. The tar sands in venezuela do not fit into any of these quantities due to two reasons. 1)It's very heavy oil and not conventional oil (it contains a lot of contaminants like sulfur, heavy metals and carbon) 2) It's a possible reserve.

It's approximately 1,700 Billion barrels of oil in place. You cannot extract but maybe 50% of this oil at most. Furthermore, it takes a LOT of energy to extract heavy crude oil. Kgrr 03:27, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Campos basin

Campos is a basin, not a field. Perhaps someone should modify this to read Country, Basin, Field.

[edit] Percentages

I am removing the reserve percentages. It is not adequate to only take the numbers posted here. This gives a distorted view of a country's oil reserves and constitutes original research. The BP statistical review of world energy has the numbers we need. I'll add it to my to do list. --129.173.105.28 16:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Its trillion Comment on direction

I didn't mean for the information to be removed. I just read Simmon's book: "Twilight in the Desert". He has a LOT of data. I will be passing the book on as of tomorrow and I will not have time to organise a template. I will urge others to do this. If we get a nice template set up then we can improve this page in very short order.

TB

[edit] Units

I am afraid there are very serious mistakes in this page. First of all, the units used are different. I believe that same units should be used in all fields, not milions, bilions and trilions. So bilions would make sense.. However, using bilions can be quite misleading, as this can mean different things in Europe and USA (bilion vs miliard). Thus I suggest using Gb for bilion (bilion as used in the article). Plus there is another problem of the numbers given here. From my information, some of them are proved reserves, some are probable reserves, some are ultimate and others are resources, not reserves. It is said that the numbers given are inital proved reserves, which is not true. For example the initial proved reserves for the Canada tar sands are 170Gb (accoridng to O&GJ), while 1.7Tb (or 1700Gb, trilion barels) is what is belived to be the ultimate resource. Plus there is no such term as intial reserves used in the petroleum industry. THe proper term is 'ultimate recoverable resourses', or just 'ultimate', which is the current possible reserves (2P) plus cumulative production. In the US they use the sum of proven reserves (1P) and the cumulative prodcution. Initial reserves can only mean one thing - the first estimate of 1P or 2P reserves (proven or possible) - information that almost nobody is actualy interested in. I am changing the inital reserves to Ultimate.

In total, the article is miselading. I do not want to edit it, as there might be some pattern that I could not read, but I guess this is not the case.

[edit] additional information on this page?

I think it would be good to add an extra column to the page covering date of discovery of each oil field —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.96.0.8 (talk) 13:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC).

I think this is a great idea. I would like to also suggest two columns with the date when the fields were brought into production and the date when peaked. Perhaps the date when they were exhausted. If this is voted OK, I will provide the needed research. Kgrr 13:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed Merge with Peak oil/Table of largest oil fields

User:Beagel proposed a merge of this table with the table I created at Peak oil/Table of largest oil fields. There was no discussion on my proposal (above) to add the columns, and the order of this table is not by size, but by geographic location.

This table in its current form does not convey the fact that most of the large oil fields that produce the most oil per day have peaked and all the new oil fields that are being found are much smaller in size and production than the super-elephants listed in the table of largest oil fields. I have trouble with some of the numbers in the table since no references are given as a source for the data. Some figures like the Orinoco Tar sands and the Athabasca Oil sands should only list recoverable reserves, not what may be in the ground. Furthermore, it does not make much sense to list relatively small oil fields since their contribution to the World's appetite for oil is small.


Hence, it does not make any sense in listing any oil field that has less than 1 billion barrels. My table stops at 10 Billion bbls. If they are ordered by size, the log-normal distribution of the oil field sizes becomes readily evident. Succinctly put, there are just a few large oil fields and they are running out. To take their place, it will take many more medium sized ones. For example, to replace the oil flow from Ghawar will take 20-30 Jack 2's Kgrr 04:50, 5 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] The C.A.R.!

Since when has the C.A.R., Uganda or Mali had any oil fieds and 2 of Mareauiania's oil fields ('Omar' and 1 other) gave no Goole hits and are thus, probaly fakes.--86.29.246.201 (talk) 20:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Those were all added by someone with an IP address quite similar to yours. Are you questioning your own work? Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 21:55, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Read this, User:86.29.246.201-

[[1]] [[2]] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.25.54.114 (talk) 22:23, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Those links to articles about farmouts have no information regarding fields, except a mention of M'Boundi field in Congo, and perhaps a discovery (not confirmed as a field) in Uganda. Geologyguy (talk) 16:45, 23 November 2007 (UTC)