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Geologist: Depletion of Oil Reservoir "Unlikely"
There are 4 alternative explanations
for the unexpectedly low oil pressure in the BP well: (1) A leak in the
pipe in the well bore; (2) flow under the well between sand layers; (3)
a blockage in the well; or (4) depletion of the oil reservoir.
This
essay focuses on the fourth possibility: depletion of the oil
reservoir. Specifically, BP claims that the oil well pressure is
perhaps 1,200 pounds per square inch less than expected because the oil
reservoir has been depleted.
The size of
the reservoir is crucial in testing BP's theory. While there are other
factors which determine oil pressure, the size of the reservoir is
probably the most important.
BP claims that there are only 50 million barrels worth of oil in the reservoir underneath the leaking spill site. Assuming a worst-case scenario of 100,000 barrels leaking a day, and given that the spill started 89 days ago, that would amount to around 8,900,000 barrels which have leaked to date.
Under this scenario - where 17.8% percent of the oil has leaked - the pressure of the well could, in fact, be declining.
But the Guardian noted on June 18th:
But
the 50m figure cited by Hayward took some industry insiders by
surprise. There have been reports the reservoir held up to 500m barrels
– the figure quoted by Hayward's questioner, Joe Barton, a Republican
from Texas.
"I would assume that 500m
barrels would be a more likely estimate," said Tadeusz Patzek, the
chairman of the department of petroleum and geosystems engineering at
the University of Texas at Austin. "I don't think you would be going
after a 50mbarrel reservoir so quickly. This is just simply not enough
oil to go after."
I spoke with the top geologist
at a major oil company today. He agreed that BP wouldn't have spent the
amounts needed to drill such a deep well unless BP thought that the
reservoir was a lot bigger than 50 million barrels of oil.
He
also said that it was unlikely that the well pressures have decreased
because of depletion of the oil in the reservoir unless BP's estimates
were way to high (in other words, if the well was as big as BP must
have thought to invest so much in the well, it couldn't have been
substantially depleted by now).
Indeed the Guardian article notes that even BP is not sure of the 50 million barrel estimate:
"We haven't made an assessment of the reserves as far as I know," said Toby Odone, a BP spokesman. "You start evaluating the reservoir once you complete the well. Obviously we didn't get to that point."
Wolf Blitzer noted on June 16th:
One
-- one expert said to me -- and I don't know if this is overblown or
not -- that they're still really concerned about the structural base of
this whole operation, if the rocks get moved, this thing could really
explode and they're sitting, what, on -- on a billion potential barrels of oil at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Similarly, Bloomberg reported on June 19th:
The ruptured well may hold as much as 1 billion barrels, the Times reported, citing Rick Mueller, an analyst at Energy Security Analysis in Massachusetts.
And Rob Kall claims that a source inside BP tells him:
Size of reservoir - estimated by BP and its partner, Andarko to be between 2.5B and 10B bbl. (that's 100,000,000,000 gallons and 400,000,000,000 gallons).Yes - all of those numbers are BILLIONS.
Given that BP's nearby Tiber and Kaskida wells each contain at least 3 billion barrels of oil (see this, this, this and this), estimates of more than a billion barrels for the leaking Macondo reservoir are not beyond the realm of possibility.
Recoverable Versus Total Oil Reserves
There's also the issue of whether 50 million is an estimate of recoverable oil or total oil in place. As the Guardian wrote:
BP
spokesmen said that Barton [with the 500 million barrel estimate] was
referring to recoverable oil rather than the total size of the
reservoir.
The Guardian clearly got this backward: the
total size of the reservoir is - by definition - larger than the amount
of recoverable oil. So what BP spokesmen must have said (and the
Guardian got backwards), is that 50 million was an estimate of
recoverable oil, while 500 million is one possible estimate for total
oil in the reservoir.
Early Estimates Are Usually Low
It is well known that:
In general, most early estimates of the reserves of an oil field are conservative and tend to grow with time. This phenomenon is called reserves growth.
Therefore,
50 million barrels might have been BP's early - and, hence, understated
- estimate of the amount of recoverable oil in the reservoir.
Seismic Tests are Imprecise
Is
it possible that BP drastically overestimated the size of the oil
reservoir, and that it really is only 50 million barrels or so?
Perhaps.
The
geologist I spoke with today told me that seismic readings so deep
under the ocean and so deep under the seabed can only pick up
impressions of things around the size of an olympic pool.
Similarly, oil industry expert Bob Cavner said seismic tests are generally used to find bigger scale things like geologic structures:
Cavner explained more about seismic testing yesterday.
While
BP talks confidently about seismic tests for leaks beneath the
seafloor, I am not so sure that a leak could be detected using seismic
given the low-resolution of seismic tests.
BP Stonewalls
The
biggest problem is that BP is keeping the information it has about the
size of the reservoir to itself, and refusing to disclose to the public
or even Congress what it knows.
Congressman Markey - chair of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming - wrote to BP on June 23rd demanding more information:
Please
provide all documents related to the geologic formation in which the
Macondo well is located. Are there significant deposits of oil and gas
in formations above the target reservoir? Please provide an estimate of
the total amount of oil and gas that is contained in i) the Macondo
well target formation and ii) each formation above the target formation
that could leak hydrocarbons into the annulus as a result of poor
cementing, damage caused by the initial explosion(s), or the failed Top
Kill effort.***
a. In order to understand the geological
complexity of the well, please provide all geological logs, including
the mud log, and all geophysical logs, including resistivity and
porosity logs.b. A May 23, 2010 article entitled “Documents
show BP chose a less- expensive, less–reliable method for completing
well in Gulf oil spill” in the Orlando Sentinel stated that well
records indicate that in late February, there was a loss in drilling
mud pressure. According to the article, this could mean that the mud
fractured layers of sand or shale in the formation and vanished. The
article goes on to state that in early March, the pressure of the oil
and gas encountered overwhelmed the pressure of the drilling mud. In
mid-April, a loss of drilling mud was reportedly again experienced. Do
any or all of these events indicate that oil and gas could be flowing
from somewhere other than the target reservoir? If so, please explain
fully, and if not, why not?
On July 15th, Congressman Markey told CNN that there has been no response from BP.
- advertisements -
what is flowing through the water here?
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:30948.asx?bkup=35246
I don't know guys but the sonar is where you'll see gas saturating the substrate and it's not showing anything at the moment. This is outside my expertise (always like to make that clear) but the reason for the sonar is to see gas saturation in the muds and there is nothing showing up there at the moment.
Gotta love those anonymous federal officials..................
Hmm,
Methinks the oil will start flowing again........
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/18/gulf-oil-seep-methane-sus_n_650531.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-18/u-s-orders-bp-to-reopen-gulf-well-capture-oil-after-concluding-tests.html
I think you are right, I suspect that BP shares will take a big hit tomorrow and I suspect you are going to see some less than comforting words from Mr. Holder's office in the very near future. Give Suttles credit for trying, I initially thought that his strategy this AM was a brilliant move but it seems he undestimated his opponents and/or just had bad luck, either way I would say that BP's situation has just gotten a whole lot more complicated and they are about to experience the full fury of the administration.
Suttles to Thad this morning "check"
Thad to Suttles with reports of these leaks "check mate"
I had an epiphany last night. I know why GW has been slathering the ZH site with these posts. He's collecting contacts for the next Kos Kids fundraiser. Gordon, you're probably already in the Platinum Club.
I think they are reporting a methane leak now...
Things are beginning to get interesting...
Official: Seep found near BP's blown out oil well. A federal official says scientists are concerned about a seep and possible methane near BP's busted oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Both could be signs there are leaks in the well that's been capped off for three days. [...] The official says BP is not complying with the government's demand for more monitoring.
interesting (referring to CDs comment not the matt simmons reference)
The Skandi Neptune ROV2 seemed to be traversing some interesting clouds/plumes near the sea floor... Nearly impossible to tell what it was, and now even more difficult for lack of reference points in the video. Q4000 ROV1 was showing large streams of bubbles covering its line of sight. Then again, could've been sediment particles. This guess work is a fool's game.
http://data.plan9.de/akamai-bp-streams.html?
Don't know if this has been posted...
Matt Simmons audio on KWNews. Matt blasts BP big time.
"BP has been lying and covering up the incident in the Gulf of Mexico from day one, because of the risk of criminal prosecution for gross negligence
People who live in the Gulf states are still in danger because of lethal methane gas. A hurricane may bring up a poisonous lake of toxic oil from the bottom of the Gulf. He believes that we might be facing one of the largest losses of life from a natural non-war related disaster."
Matt also discusses a rumor that 2 newspeople attempted to gain access to med clinics in/around Grande Isle Louisiana, where reports that sick and dying people were being treated, but were blocked by National Guardsmen.
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast_Gold+/Entries/2010/7/17_Matt_Simmons.html
Hat tip to Jesse's Cafe Americain
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
Making shit up.
God forbid we miss anything Matt has to say.......................
Something else they've been hiding:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/294675
Feeling "owned" yet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI&feature=related
I would mostly concur with you, GW. I say there is noway-nohow that BP drills in that depth of water a wildcat based around anything under several hundred million bbls of oil potential.
Given that though, mother nature is cruel to the petroleum geologist. Reservoirs are complex and can be compartmentalized. Even if the overall reservoir is quite substantial, there can be faulting that separates the overall reservoir into areas that each must be produced through other wellbores. So, it is remotely possible that they could be in a portion of this large oil field that has smaller reserve potential...still in millions of bbls, but not The Big One.
I would also add that the amount of oil produced to date from the wild well is most likely somewhat less than that maximum figure. I have seen various estimates hashed-about. In the beginning, producing through the bent riser the flow rates were probably much less than the rates once the thing was more or less fully opened before the LMRP was placed onto the BOP stack.
You don't know what you're talking about. 50 MMBO recoverable will produce 3.2 BILLION dollars of revenue (assuming $80/b - plus 800,000,000 for the US Government). Two wells and a subsea tieback would have run 300-400 million dollars and the given the perms here the revenue stream would come if 4-6 years total. That's a HELL of a ROI.
gasm, it's all speculation but the idea that it's 50m seems low given the serious amounts of oil in the neighborhood, and snakey's idea that you can the correlate the # of exporatory wells to reserve size does not appear to be consistent with other projects e.g. Atlantis, Thunder Horse
Two wells and a subsea tieback would cost ~350 million dollars (that's a quess but it's in a realistic range, depends on how many wells you need and how close existing facilities are). 50 million barrels recoverable means 40 million barrels net to the owners (the gov't gets the other 10). At $80/barrel that's 3.2 billion dollars in revenue that comes over about 5 years (plus a couple for the development so total of 7). That's an ROI that most companies in most industries would be thrilled with. Further you need to understand that when you're planning the exploration you don't KNOW how big it's going to be, you make estimates of a potential size range and run economics of the mean of the uncertainty distribution. Meaning about 60% of the time if you are successful the actual size found is LESS than the number you used for your economics. So BP could have drilled the well LOOKING for 100 MMBOE but found 50. But the prospect would have been wonderfully economic at 50 MMBOE if the chance of success was high.
We don't know exactly how large it is but based on the well logs that are public 50-100 MMBOE is a very realistic number. Remember that the reservoir pressures were LOWER than the surrounding shales - one of the key determinants of reservoir pressure in this trend is how high the column of hydrocarbons is, this relationship suggests a SMALLER than expected reservoir with a short column. 300 MMBOE would be very hard for me to believe and the higher you get the harder it is to buy. A billion barrel estimate is much like 70,000 psi flowing pressures and 25,000 ft depths - it is a sign of one of two things 1) the person making it is not really an expert or 2) the person making it has not bothered to look at the easily available information. In either case it's not a credible estimate.
On the number of wells - deepwater plays are economic because you can drain them with relatively few wells. Snakey is right that in any given trend you can correlate the # of wells to reserve size but the correlation is a function of the geologic trend and in this one the correlation requires very high recoveries per well.
beg to differ the number of exploratory wells does not indicate the size of the reserve, are you familiar with the pressures at Atlantis or Thunder Horse?
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it takes FEWER development wells in this trend than in other areas because the individual wells make very high recoveries. There IS a relationship between the size of the reserve & the number of wells but the relationship is more reserves per well than was being suggested earlier. Sorry if I failed to make that clear. I am not familiar with the pressures at Atlantis or Thunderhorse but those fields were reported to have very high columns which would suggest they had high pressures. The pressures here being lower than the surrounding shales suggests a short column.
Since we're discussing Thunder Horse, it is a much better analog than Tiber or Kaskaskia, it is Miocene turbidites in a salt minibasin in the Mississippi Canyon offshore area and it can be instructive in regard to the points I've tried to make this evening. It is the largest producing field in the GOM. It includes 3 offshore blocks and has been described as a billion barrels recoverable. The development consists of 25 wells with subsea completions tied back to a floating platform. The discovery well encountered 520' of net pay in three intervals. Thunder Horse two encountered 675' of net pay in three intervals. A separate accumulation was found at Thunder Horse North with 581 net ft of pay. ( http://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/crazy_horse/ ) These numbers ought to help you parameterize the points I'm trying to make. 25 wells for a billion barrels is about 40 MMBOE per well.
So that is what a billion barrel find looks like - 3 offshore blocks, 500-700 net feet of pay, 25 wells to develop. This discovery is 75' of net pay and my costs guesses are assuming 2-4 wells to develop. Hopefully that clarifies why I'm so adamant that when 'experts' talk about billion barrel reserves we are back in the 'making shit up' phase.
Please note - I'm not saying BP was exploring for 50 MMBOE. I'm saying that is not unreasonable as an estimate of what they found.
Prospectivity of the Ultra-Deepwater Gulf of Mexico
Roger N. Anderson & Albert Boulanger
Lean Energy Initiative
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Columbia University
Palisades, New York 10964
http://www.leanenergy.ldeo.columbia.
Industry estimates of the hydrocarbon potential of the deep and ultra-deepwater in the
Gulf of Mexico range as high as 46 billion barrels of crude oil equivalent (boe) (see OCS Report
MMS 2000-022). That the nation will need these additional new reserves is evident from the
ever-increasing gap projected between continuing increases in consumption of hydrocarbons and
declining U.S. oil production estimated by the Energy Information Administration (Figure 2).
Recent oil and gas discoveries with colorful names like Crazy Horse, Thunder Horse, Atlantis,
Holstein, Mad Dog, Kings Peak, Diana Hoover, Auger, Mars, Na Kika, Neptune and Ursa have
demonstrated the potential of the ultra-deepwater in the Gulf of Mexico to fill some of this gap.
However, the production capabilities of the ultra-deepwater reservoirs in water depths from 6,000
to greater than 10,000 feet, remains largely a mystery at this time...
Figure 1. The Sigsbee salt sheet (white) defines the ultra-deepwater at the boundary of the continental margin
and deep basin of the northern Gulf of Mexico. It’s southern terminus is marked by an 800 meter escarpment,
and the whole salt sheet is moving downhill to the south at several cm/yr...
I was able to download this a couple of months ago, but they have killed the link now...21 page report, very interesting, PDF format.
here it is
http://leanenergy.ldeo.columbia.edu/docs/UltraDeep%20Prosp%2010-22-02.pdf
Thanks - that's an interesting review that I'll have to find time to read in detail. But none of it is any secret and I still don't understand what point Rusty Shorts is trying to make by posting it.
"and the whole salt sheet is moving downhill to the south at several cm/yr"
- okay gasm, what happens to the casing/well bore??
Rusty if your concern is that they drilled through salt - we've been doing it for 20 years. They know the shallow Sigsbee salt flows, that's not where they drilled through it. It's not an issue, not secret, and I can assure you people are not drilling $100 million wells that are going to fail due to an issue that's been well understood for 50 years...............................
So?
These are all things we're well aware of - I don't see the point you're trying to make.
Hi gasm thanks for taking the time to respond, where are you getting the net pay for Macondo?
The logs have been posted here multiple times. They were in the data that was released from Congress. I don't have an online link or I'd post it.
Has anyone looked recently at the stream from the ROV monitoring the cap?
But, but...I thought BP was one of the most ethical and transparent organizations in the world, no? It painted all its gas stations green and even has green color all over its website - surely that must mean they care about the environment, yes?
Gordo,
I love your comments on gold, but here I don't think you're adding any value. Theres a million reasons why there won't be 1 billion barrels of oil in the ocean. If producing oil was really that easy, there would be entire industries that don't exist. One hole is not going to deplete an entire formation.
No one atually knows what the size of the reservoir is. They can only estimate and guestimate. Deliniation wells need to be drilled. Wells need to be put into production to see what the reservoir pressure is doing. Just because there is oil there doesn't mean it will magically somehow spill into the ocean.
Regards
Broken
BP is transparent Gordon.Transparently Evil.As much as we loathe and detest GS around here, the oil majors are in a distinctly higher realm of Evil.When Iran was ready to nationalize their oil a certain company was involved in protesting that move.
You get one guess who it was.
So the fabulous Shah was installed, and the rest is history.I wonder what would have happened if we had left Iran alone?There is simply no way to tell.And now they seem to want the Bomb....gee, I wonder why?
To all BP shills (i.e. Rockford et. al.):
Now awaiting y'all to present your "data" on how this oil well contains way less than 50 million barrels and justification of how BP was stupid enough to spend gigantic amounts of money (including drilling one of the deepest wells ever and hiring the world's largest rig to do it) on such a small reservoir of oil.
The well drilled was an exploritory well. Locations for those are chosen based upon various factors, primarily interpretations of seismic data. They can somewhat determine that there is the right structure in the formations. It takes an actual drill bit to prove what the formations are, if they have the required porosity, and if there is oil or gas in the pores, not just water.
this well is certainly not one of the deepest wells ever, not even close. It is located in what is classified as deep water, but quite a few wells have been drilled in deeper water locations.
Once the well is drilled and evaluated, they can decide if there is anything worth developing further. that is why you can see fields that have 2 wells and fields that have 40 wells. They all started with the first exploratory well and high hopes. There are also hoped for fields that did not play out so that the first well was a dry hole or noneconomic and it was p/a from the start.
Your assumption that BP has certain knowledge of what will be found when they decide to drill a prospect is simply nonsense.
GG - gold is currently ~1200/oz. Assuming you were in the gold mining business aand someone made the following offer: You can spend $350 million dollars over the next 2 years to develop a property that will yield 3.3 million ounces of gold within 5 years. I want your company to spend that money and give me 20% of the production of the property. Would you consider that a stupid deal?
I was not aware that the DWH was larger than Thunder Horse or that it drilled a well at MC252 of more than 35,000 ft.
If you read carefully, which I'm sure you're incapable of, I said "one of the deepest wells...".
M4570D0N , since you bring up Thunder Horse with its estimated billion barrels of oil reserves do you have any other contributions to make to the discussion?
yeah, look up how many wells are involved with that. (here's a hint: It's absolutely not just 1)
and how many wells did it start with?
hint: just remove the word "not" in the hint you provided
I'm not going to repost the links and quotes I shared in Leo's Doom thread.
But does anyone have any idea if the theory regarding the recent earthquakes being related to GOM has legs?
There is an earthquake zone in the GOM and Macondo's at the edge of it. But it's not related to the quakes you mentioned.
Yes. No legs. Oil isn't formed in any geological formations that could possibly transmit shock waves anywhere near that far.
The Exploding Water of the Gulf
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/18/885266/-The-Exploding-Water-...
I'm sure BP shills such as Rockford, gasbag...er...gasminder et. al. will be happy to drink and bathe in that water (and post it on youtube for all of us to see) if only to prove to us all how "safe"/"clean" it is and what a bang-up job BP is doing of cleaning up the gulf with nutritious, pure and "safe" fluids such as Corexit. After all, there's nothing like little chemical dispersant mixed with crude oil and other combustible hydrocarbons to make your water safe for drinking!
At the link posted by doublethink, the water exploded only when a particular chemical was added to it. It did not explode on its own.
You can drink motor oil and be ok - I saw a drunk as hell guy drink a half a quart of it at a party one time and he claimed he just crapped it out the next day and 20 something years later he is fine but I am not sure if in that form it would be deadly doing that or not.
Hell, I polished off a six of Quaker State just last night... 5W-30 is my preferred grade.
URRRPPPPPPP,
The silence is deafening...
Interesting stuff. However, BP's drilling plan for the 252 Mississippi Canyon area (http://tinyurl.com/37u68nl) is for only two wells, which corresponds to a 50 million bbl (recoverable) reservoir. They may have leases for undrilled adjacent areas that have huge reservoirs but have never filed drilling plans for them as far as I can tell.
And please, you may as well be citing Captain Kangaroo if you're going to cite Blitzer.
snake, these were exploratory wells, I am not aware of a correlation between the number of exploratory wells and reservoir size.
If I am not mistaken another BP property in the Mississippi Canyon, Thunder Horse began with just a single exploratory well and I assume you are aware of its estimated size
http://www.rigzone.com/news/image_detail.asp?img_id=5071