Opening
14:15 – Direction of the Geophysics Centre of Évora: Wellcome and Introduction

Lectures
Chair: Mourad Bezzeghoud (Geophysics Centre of Évora)
Carlos Cramez (geologist, President of H.E.A.T. Consulting, Switzerland)
Jean Laherrère (geophysicist, ex-Total, Petroconsultants and Petroleum Economist, ASPO member)
Pedro Prieto (Crisis Energetica, ASPO-Spain, and AEREN, Spain)

16:45 – Open Debate

Closure
17:30 – Rui Namorado Rosa (Geophysics Centre of Évora and ASPO): Final comment

Attendance is free, however, in case you wish to attend, we ask you kindly send a message with your identification to register to the address: aspo2005@uevora.pt

The Seminar will be followed by the public presentation (in Portuguese) of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas – ASPO - and the announcement of its Portuguese branch, with the presence of its two national members – Manuel Collares-Pereira and Rui Namorado Rosa. The DVD with the works of the IV INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON OIL AND GAS DEPLETION, held in Lisbon on 19-20 May 2005, and the website of ASPO-Portugal will be launched then.

ABSTRACTS

Peak oil and energy related peaks!

Jean Laherrere

What was born will die: sun, earth, mankind and civilisation. It is important to display natural events in order to show growth, peaks and decline. But finding reliable and complete databases is almost impossible. Publishing data is a political act and depends upon the image his author wants to give. Published data are mainly political or financial. Technical data are confidential except in UK, Norway and US federal lands. There are two different worlds: the political remaining reserves which increase since 1950 and the technical remaining reserves which decrease since 1980. Ambiguity is favoured. Terms are loosely defined to allow freedom to display what is wanted. Oil can represent in 2005 either regular oil for Campbell at 66 Mb/d or crude oil (plus some condensate) at 71 Mb/d or all liquids (including gas liquids, synthetic oils (even from coal and biomass) and refinery gains at 84 Mb/d. Technical databases can be bought (very expensive) to scout companies, but they differ widely. It is necessary to correct all these sources in order to obtain worldwide homogeneous mean (expected value) backdated reserves. Creaming curves allow estimating ultimate reserves. Such data can be easily modelled with multi-logistic curves for cumulative discovery and production. Forecast is modelled for crude oil less extra-heavy oil with an ultimate of 2000 Gb and for all liquids for an ultimate of 3000 Gb. The oil peak from the supply will come around 2010-2015, but a bumpy plateau is likely if oil demand is constrained by an economic crisis (Volcker’s forecast). R/P is a very poor ratio to use for forecasting because it trends towards an asymptote of about 15-20 years. Reserve growth comes for so-called proved reserves from bad reporting (omitting probable) and from bad aggregation. Natural gas is forecasted in the same way and will peak for the world 10 years later than oil. But because the high cost of transport, there are three gas markets and shortage is coming for North America (rush on LNG terminals) and soon for Europe, which is counting too much on Russian overestimated reserves. Coal production is also forecasted peaking around 2050. Forecasts on primary energy are displayed, as the population in order to study consumption per capita. Energy per capita has been around 1.7 toe per capita for the last 25 years and will stay at this level for the next 25 years. Half of the world population (with educated women) has a fertility rate below replacement and is going towards extinction. There are two worlds of different future: countries with low fertility rate and countries with high rates. Oil price forecasts have been always wrong and I refuse to do any forecast outside that oil price will be chaotic for the next decade. The only change is that OPEC goal of 25 $/b which was in effect for the last 20 years is now increased to 50 $/b. Energy intensity b/$ GDP is for me a poor parameter because GDP represents not wealth but manipulated expenditures. GDP is not at all related to happiness. GDP growth varies in parallel with oil production growth. For the last 40 years, world energy represents only 5% of the GDP when its contribution is estimated by experts to be about 50%. Energy is completely underestimated in our present world. Politician and managers are judged on growth and decline is a politically incorrect term. All official forecasts are only political, based on an economic growth of 3%/a. But continuous growth is impossible in a limited world. Agriculture depends completely upon oil and gas, but world cereals production flattens and stocks decrease. Agriculture cannot feed the world and its cars! Climate change has been going since 4 billion years, shown clearly in geological outcrops by lithology changes. Temperature and CO2 has been varying widely for the last 600 millions years, and largely above the present values. Human emissions disturb the climate but it is on fourth order compared to Nature. The 2001 TAR IPCC report was based on 40 energy scenarios, which are unrealistic, and its conclusion is as unreliable as its hypothesis. The 2007 AR4 IPCC report will be based on the same bad scenarios: GIGO! Conclusion: data are unreliable and will not improve as long as OPEC fight between their selves on quotas. We have reached the limits of the earth. Peaks of fossil fuels are coming and, because nuclear cannot fill the gap for the next 30 years (breeders are needed), the main solution is energy savings. We need to change our way of life based on cheap energy. Human will change their behaviour only if they are convinced that energy price will increase drastically for long. All who claims that peak oil is several decades away will be guilty if peak occurs soon because the world will be completely unprepared. Catastrophism is allowed for climate, but not for energy. Why?

Nature Principles - Energy Problems - New HC Discoveries

C. Cramez & J. Laherrere

In early 2005, estimated global oil demand was forecast to reach 86 Mbl/d (millions barrels a day) or more by the end of the year, and demand increases had almost forecasts each year from 2002 to 2004. Development is now underway on a number of giant oilfields around the world (Kashagan, Gulf of Mexico, West Africa), but none of these projects is expected to produce in excess of 200-250 kbl/d. The volume of water produced from the world’s oil fields is now estimated to exceed 200 Mbl/d, nearly 3 times the volume of the oil. Oil wells in US produce more than 7 bls of water for each barrel of oil. The annual cost to US producers for disposing of this produced water is $ 5-10 G. Worldwide, the cost to handle superfluous water is estimated to be around $40 G. Sooner or later, the worldwide use of oil must peak, because oil, like the other two fossil fuels, coal and natural gas is non-renewable. The chief natural laws, that is to say, (1) Inequality, (2) Self Similarity, (3) Fractal Distribution, (4) Cyclicity, (5) Finiteness, (6) Gravitation, (7) Life, (8) Determinism & Probabilism, (9) Symmetry (Central Limit Theorem) are briefly summarized and depicted. Applying the available data base (OPEC, OGJ, Petroconsultants, BP review, World Oil and USDOE/EIA), few general hypotheses related to HC exploration and production can be advanced: (a) publishing reserves is a political act, (b) field growth (reserves appreciation) corresponds mainly to bad practices of reserves reporting, (c) technological progress lead to faster and cheaper production, but has not much impact on conventional reserves revisions. Technological progress is needed for unconventional resources, (d) oil price increase will raise unconventional resources not yet listed as reserves, but it does not increase conventional reserves, (e) cheap oil will peak soon in North Sea and Non-OPEC countries, (f) for the world, it will peak around 2005, (g) Excluding the Eastern deep water of the South Atlantic margin, where large fields (± 500 Mb) are likely (subsalt plays unexplored), the future short term reserves are those that in past have been missed or have not take into account. These conjectures have been corroborated since 1990 (Cusiana, Lombo-East, Villeperdue, Peciko, Ben Berkine, etc.), (h) long term reserves will be chiefly associated with few foredeep basins and folded belts in which seismic data is whether impossible to acquire or useless (Papua New Guinea, Andes, Rocky Mountains, Ural Mountains, Assam, etc.), (i) future exploration requires a good data base and explorationists with an appropriate experience in all branches of exploration (examples of this type of exploration and suggestions for future international exploration are proposed).

Energy in Spain: Renewables, Opportunities and Threats

Pedro Prieto

The foreseeable depletion of fossil fuels and the subsequent spikes in the oil prices and its derivates has raised the interest in renewable energies throughout the world. Many world leaders and consultants are turning into alternative sources of energy and looking with increasing interest to energy vectors and storage systems. Several programs have been established to this effect in the main countries. The case of Spain is remarkable, as it has placed in the wind energy systems as second to Germany in the world, with some 10 GW installed power and targeting to 20 GW within the last plans and fourth in the world in production and installed base in solar systems, among them, mainly photovoltaic and lately, also thermoelectric systems in Southern Spain. Although the climate and the wind patterns are quite favourable in this country, there is no doubt that the regulatory system implemented by the Spanish Government has definitely helped to promote the implementation of these technologies. Other renewable energies, like biomass and biofuels in its different varieties are also being promoted. The question remains on whether these systems will be able to smoothly replace the growing gap left by the fossil fuels and also on the net energy yield, which is under discussion, as many of the manufacturing processes of renewable systems heavily rely on a fossil fuel world and could eventually suffer the bumpy road ahead.

BIOGRAPHIES

JEAN LAHERRERE

Born May 30, 1931. After graduation from Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Nationale du Pétrole in Paris, he participated with Compagnie Francaise des Pétroles (now TOTAL) in the Sahara exploration with the discoveries of two supergiant fields: Hassi Messaoud and Hassi R'Mel. He went to explore Central, Southern and Western Australia. He was in charge of exploration in Canada for TOTAL in Calgary where he started exploring Labrador Sea and Michigan. After 15 years overseas, he went to TOTAL headquarters in Paris where he was in charge successively of the new ventures negotiation, technical services and research, basin exploration departments and finally deputy exploration manager. He was member of the Safety Panel of the Ocean Drilling Program (JOIDES). He was President of the Exploration Commission of the Comité des Techniciens of the Union Française de l'Industrie Pétrolière where he directed the publication of a dozen of manuals. He was director of Compagnie Génerale de Geophysique, Petrosystems and various TOTAL subsidiaries. After 37 years of worldwide exploration with TOTAL, he retired in 1991. He is now writing articles and giving lectures. He has written several reports with Petroconsultants and Petroleum Economist on world's oil and gas potential and future production. He was a member of the "Society of Petroleum Engineers/World Petroleum Congress ad hoc Committee on joint definitions of petroleum reserves" and also a member of the task force on "Perspectives Energie 2010-2020" for the "Commissariat Général du Plan". His graphs are used in the International Energy Agency 1998 report "World International Outlook" and in the World Energy Council reports 2000 "Energy for tomorrow's world - Acting Now" & 2004 "Drivers of the energy scene". He chaired the 2002 World Petroleum Congress (Rio of Janeiro) panel on hydrates (RFP9 "Economic Use of Hydrates: Dream or Reality?"). He is a member of ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and gas).

CARLOS CRAMEZ

Carlos Cramez is a Swiss and French citizen. He was born in 1939, in Vila Real, Portugal. After getting a baccalaureate, in Vila Real (Camilo Castelo Branco Academy), he studied Geology at the University of Porto. With a scholarship of the Calouste Gulbenkian Fondation he spent five years in Switzerland and Norway studying and working as Assistant to Prof. C.E. Wegmann at the University of Neuchâtel, where he obtained a Ph.D. in Tectonics. Starting his professional career as Chief Geologist in a subsidiary of ALCAN, in Brazil, he joined Total in 1968. Since then, he has worked in the Petroleum Exploration around the world (Angola, Indonesia, Canada, USA, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Philippines, North Sea, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Yemen, Syria, China, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Vietnam, etc.,). After being in charge of Total's Seismic Interpretation Department he was appointed, in 1987 Adviser to the Senior Vice President of Exploration & Production. Besides experience in Hydrocarbon Exploration, where he participated in several major oil discoveries (Bekapai and Handil in Indonesia; Lombo East, in Angola, Cusiana in Colombia, etc..), he has carried out intense academic and scientific activities, lecturing at the Universities of Neuchâtel (Switzerland), Besançon (France) and Institut Français du Pétrole (France). Between 1989 and 2003, he was Adjunct Professor of Geology and Geophysics at the Rice University in Houston (USA), working in collaboration with Profs. A. Bally and P. Vail. He has presented several important papers in scientific Symposiums and Conventions, mainly in Seismic Interpretation, Sequence Stratigraphy, Salt Tectonics, Petroleum Systems, Inversion Tectonics, Tectonic Regimes, Sedimentary Basin & Petroleum Systems, etc. At the end of 2000, he pre-retired from Total. Since then, he was President of H.E.A.T. Consulting Switzerland, till 2004. Presentlty, he advises several International Oil Companies, as well as major American Financing Companies, in International Exploration Businesses.

PEDRO PRIETO

Pedro Prieto is a Spaniard, born in Madrid, in 1950. As a Telecom Technical Engineer he has been working in the industry since his graduation in 1972. He worked in R&D activities and as professor in the R&D labs of ITT in Madrid. He then became Export Director of a public owned Spanish telecom company in the field of broadcasting in 1984. Finally, he joined Alcatel as commercial director for the Eastern and Central Europe and South East Asia. He then was appointed as Marketing and Commercial Director of Alcatel in Poland in 1989. Later covering Latin America, also as commercial director and finally as Vice president of the Radio Communications Division of Alcatel for Portugal, Spain, Latin America and China. He has visited and traded in more than 60 countries and lived, on permanent basis, in 6 different countries, many of them energy producers, as Iraq, Venezuela, Colombia, China or Argentina. He retired in 2002 and became a part time ecological farmer in Western Spain and a specialist in energy issues. His interest in energy started when he saw black snow flakes falling and covering the Katowice city in Poland, in the late eighties. Ever since, he has been increasingly involved in energy issues and founded Crisis Energética in 2003, the reference web in Spanish language for the ASPO organization and newsletters. He also created the Association for the Study of Energy Resources (AEREN) in Spain, a non profit organization, aimed to raise awareness on the fossil energy depletion at global level and its consequences for mankind. He is also consultant for renewable energies, today assessing various solar photovoltaic projects in Spain and leading a pioneering cooperative and turnkey project of 1 Mwp solar plant in Western Spain, with a challenging concentration technology at 400 suns, with double axe tracking systems.

PAPERS