Christof Stork on World Oil 2/2006


Did you see the recent report that Kuwaiti true reserves are half what they officially claim? The source was credible. Reuters and Energy Bulletin.

Also, links I like are:

This site produces a credible weekly newsletter: Peak Oil Review. You can subscribe by sending a blank e-mail to

This is a bit long, but it covers a lot of angles: Life After the Crash.

This gives an overview of the massive Venezuelan heavy oil reserves: Cohesion at Rice U and World Energy

Here is an overview of Alberta Oil Sands: Econ Browser.

The presentations from a recent interesting ASPO conference on Peak Oil can be found at: ASPO Conference. Here are pdf renditions of three good talks from the meeting.

W.Kovarik makes some (slightly ludicrous) arguments against the concept of Peak Oil.

As for the impact on our field, no matter when peak oil happens, I think a key thing is that the industry mood/focus is clearly starting to shift. I expect the Peak Oil concept is starting to gain traction and the industry will start to emphasize exploration more. We're seeing it in several ways. They realize they can't keep production up through acquisition or enhanced production methods any more. Companies' emphasis on geophysical technology can be seen through their hiring and generally being more aggressive with geophysical technology. It's taken some time for this demand to filter through and soak up supply, but there is clearly a shortage of research people to work on worth while projects.

The industry needs to be more aggressive with technology, but there aren't enough people. The current state of geophysical research is really paltry compared to the huge business that oil is. The amount of aggressive research in our industry is very, very low. There are only a handful of real technology movers in the industry.