Graph of the Day: Oil production decline rates

From The Oil Drum:

This post offers a kind of reverse engineering of what numbers could be behind the long and detailed IEA decline analysis in their last report (2008 IEA WEO). A tentative decline structure for the post-peak Super-Giant and Giants oilfields is offered as well as a possible scenario for future production. The conclusions are:

1. It seems that the yearly decline rate of the post-peak resource base may accelerate  to 10% until 2011 and then stabilize back toward 4.35%. This acceleration is due to the rapid decline rates for Large and Small oil fields (around 10%). Coincidentally, this value is the total decline rate value implicitly used by the IEA in their final forecast (see discussion here).
2. 83.0% of the 2007 conventional oil resource base (69.8 mbpd in 2007) is coming from post-peak fields.
3. The contribution from Super-Giants, Giants may have reached a broad plateau around 41 mbpd.
4. Production may slide rapidly over 3-4 years past 2009 due to a short bust in decline of the resource base then reach a gentler decline regime past 2012.  …

Analysis of Decline Rates

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