At the beginning of the 20th century, some scholars made qualitative judgments on the future oil and gas discovery and production, which can be regarded as the embryonic form of oil and gas resource trend prediction. In the past 100 years, it has gone through three stages: personal subjective judgment stage (from the early 20th century to the 1950s), quantitative prediction stage by applying mathematical models (from the 1960s to the 1980s) and comprehensive prediction stage (since the 1990s).
(A) the stage of personal subjective judgment
This stage began at the beginning of the 20th century, which is mainly the subjective judgment of some geologists on the oil and gas resources in the United States or the world and the estimation of the future. 1906, I.C. White, the third chairman of American Petroleum Geologists Association and a famous oil and gas expert, gave a speech on American oil and gas resources at the White House governors' meeting. He estimated that the final recoverable reserves of American oil were between100×108 ~ 250×108 bbl, that is, 65438 bbl. 19 19, DaveWhite, chief geologist of USGS, thought that "the peak of (global) oil production will soon pass, possibly within three years". 1920 In May, another famous geologist, Pratt, the chief geologist of the US Geological Survey, predicted the final recoverable oil reserves in the United States. He said, "Because the reserves are continuously exploited, the peak of American output will soon pass, maybe five years or only three years", but it is actually 1920 ~ 65438+. These famous oil experts' pessimistic judgments on oil and gas resources and output are subjective and limited, but they also reflect that in the early stage of oil and gas exploration and development in the world, due to the constraints of geological laws, technical conditions and economic conditions, people's understanding and discovery process of oil and gas resources is superficial.
(B) the application of mathematical models for quantitative prediction stage
Since 1950s, geologists have tried to quantitatively study the trend prediction of oil and gas resources by using mathematical models. M.K. harbert is a famous American petroleum geologist, who initiated the model research of peak oil theory. From 65438 to 0949, he published an article "Energy from Fossil Fuels" in Science, and put forward the problem of "bell curve" of mineral resources. 65438-0956, Hubbert cooperated with USGS to analyze and predict the oil production trend in the United States. The forecast shows that American oil production will reach its peak at 1966 to 197 1, which proves his prediction. In 1962, Hubbert used actual data to fit logistic curve, and obtained a model that can be used to predict cumulative production and final recoverable reserves. This model is widely used abroad, and it is named harbert model. Since then, harbert has applied its model development to the discovery law of proven recoverable reserves and the prediction of final recoverable resources, and applied it to the prediction of recoverable resources in North America and other regions, and achieved good results. Since then, Albert bartlett, Colin J Campbell, Cutler J Cleveland, Kenneth. Deffeyes, Richard Duncan and others analyzed the harbert curve in detail, and predicted the growth trend of world oil and gas reserves and production by using the harbert curve.
Other scholars, such as J. J. Arps, M. Mortada and A. E. Smith, have also established a dynamic exploration discovery model by applying the principle of probability and statistics, and applied it to the prediction of the final recoverable resources in the United States.
In addition, widely used forecasting models include Gompers model and stochastic models based on probability theory and statistical theory, such as Weibull model and lognormal distribution model.
(3) Comprehensive forecast stage
Since 1990s, because oil and gas resources are playing an increasingly important role in the world economy, governments of developed countries, multinational oil companies and some academic research institutions have carried out a lot of research on oil and gas resources trend prediction. The research content is more and more extensive, the methods and means are more and more diverse, and the factors considered are more and more complicated; The purpose of the research is not limited to academic discussion, but to provide a basis for countries or organizations and oil companies to formulate development strategies.
Second, the prediction model
Judging from the research methods, qualitative judgment and mathematical model quantitative prediction are mainly used, and harbert model is a common model. Harbert model means that the exploitation of any oilfield follows a bell-shaped trend, which starts to rise gently, then rises sharply, remains stable at the top, and finally drops rapidly.
Geologist Jean Lacher, after doing a lot of research on the relationship between oil reserves and production growth in many countries in the world, thinks that excluding political or other influences, the production growth curve will be the mirror image of the reserve growth curve, and there is a "lag correspondence" between the peak of production and the peak of reserves discovery. In addition, he also studied the prediction function of harbert curve on oil production, and pointed out that a single harbert curve may be suitable for the situation that the oil production in the United States has only one peak shape. Most oil and gas fields are affected by petroleum geological conditions, exploration and development technology, economic factors and policies and regulations, and their oil and gas reserves and production often show "multi-peak" characteristics, so it is necessary to use multi-cycle harbert model for fitting and forecasting. From 65438 to 0999, Al-Jarri and Startzman developed the single-period harbert model into a multi-period harbert model, and in 2000, the multi-period harbert model was used to predict the world natural gas supply.
In addition, widely used forecasting models include Gompers model and stochastic models based on probability theory and statistical theory, such as Weibull model and lognormal distribution model.
Third, the forecast example
(a) United States Geological Survey World Oil Assessment 2000
In the USGS2000 world oil resources evaluation, not only the amount of oil and gas resources to be discovered is predicted, but also the global oil and gas reserves growth potential is predicted by using the empirical simulation model of domestic oil reserves growth in the United States. The results show that in 2025, the proven recoverable reserves of conventional oil in the world are 1734× 108t, the known oil field reserves increase from 1995 by1000./kloc-0 /×108t, and the undiscovered resources are/. Among them, China has proven oil reserves of 25. 1× 108t, known oil field reserves have increased by 26.8× 108t, and unproven resources are 20× 108t, totaling 7 1.9× 108t.
(2) EIA's prediction of world oil production
According to the evaluation results of the US Geological Survey on the world's conventional oil resources in 2000, us energy information administration (EIA) considered the average annual growth rates of four kinds of world oil production (2248× 109bbl, 3003× 109bbl and 3896× 109bbl).
Figure 2- 1- 1 EIA's prediction of world oil production (EIA, 2000)
(C) the study of peak oil
Peak oil refers to the peak of global oil production, which is essentially to study the problem of oil depletion. The peak oil theory makes a qualitative and quantitative study on reserves, production and operation from a brand-new perspective.
At present, there are four main views on the global peak oil theory: some geologists think it will appear in the recent 15 years; Some scholars think it will appear many years later, for example, Odell thinks it should appear after 2060; IEA, EIA, Exxon, WETO Research, DTI and other energy organizations or oil companies think that peak oil is unpredictable; Some economists think that the peak oil will not occur.
The world oil resources can be divided into optimists and pessimists. Optimists mainly include organizations representing the government and oil companies, such as the US Geological Survey and BP, while pessimists mainly include organizations representing geologists, such as ASPO.
Optimistic experts and scholars believe that the world is rich in conventional oil and gas resources, and there is no problem if the factors of technological progress are considered. For example, in the 2000 World Oil and Gas Resources Assessment published by the US Geological Survey (USGS) at the 16 World Petroleum Congress, the final recoverable reserves of conventional oil in the world are 4 109× 108t, which is a substantial increase compared with the previous forecast. Thomas Ahlbrand, director of the World Energy Engineering Project of the US Geological Survey, insists on the concept of high and stable production, does not believe in the coming peak oil, and takes the British North Sea oil field for example that it has repeatedly violated the bell curve shape law in the past 20 years, and thinks that the oil era is far from over. In recent years, BP's annual statistics published the data of oil reserve-production ratio every year, which lasted about 40 years.
According to the report published by Cambridge Energy Research Association, there is about 3.74×10/2 bbl of crude oil left in the world, which is enough for human use 122 years according to the current consumption. The report also believes that global oil production will not reach its peak until 2030, and after the peak, oil production will not suddenly decline, but will go through a process of "ups and downs" and then gradually decrease. According to the report, oil production will decline permanently in the second half of 2 1 century, and it is expected that this date will be postponed through the discovery of new oil fields, technological development, energy reserves and the use of other energy sources. Until then, oil production is expected to remain at a high and stable level.
ExxonMobil and other oil companies believe that the world's reserves of heavy oil, oil sands and shale oil are about 7× 10 12bbl, which is roughly equivalent to the conventional oil reserves. As long as 20% of the resources are found, it will exceed the world's conventional oil production so far 1× 10 12bbl. For example, the oil in Canadian oil sands is estimated as much as 1750× 108bbl, which is higher than that in Iran or Iraq.
Pessimists are not optimistic about the prospect of world oil resources. ASPO believes that oil companies represented by BP overestimate the world's proven oil reserves. At the end of 2003, BP announced that the world's proven oil reserves were 1 148× 109 barrels, while ASPO estimated it to be 780× 109 barrels. There is a big difference between the two sets of data. ASPO believes that because the oil resources are limited, the oil production will inevitably decline after the peak; Specifically, among the more than 100 oil-producing countries, there are about 64 countries that exceed the peak oil value, including the United States, Russia, Britain, Norway, Indonesia and so on. For example, the peak of American oil appeared in 19 and 7 1, the peak of British oil appeared in 19, and the peak of world oil production was in 2005-2006.