Posted by Chris Vernon on June 4, 2008 - 9:50am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: bbc, north sea, peak oil [list all tags]
On BBC One Scotland at 22:45 this evening (Wed 4th June) Hayley Millar explores the history and future of North Sea oil and reasons for the recent run up in the oil price in the documentary Truth, Lies, Oil and Scotland.
COMMENTS -
One of the talking heads "gets it" (I'm paraphrasing here)
"The crunch will come in 2010, plus or minus 2 years... You have to look at the flow rates... beyond 2011, the flow rates go down"
(cut to Hayley Miller, who clearly doesn't "get it")
"But I want to find out how long it will last"
Mind you, there is the economist view "It's all speculators; the real price is $40 per barrel", so she's not doing too badly.
"There is no shortage of supply, as the declared reserves have grown by 2.5% per year" - that person really needs to be hit with the clue bat. "It's the flow, stupid!"
AKH
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That was painful to watch. You'd almost think that North Sea oil production wasn't declining at a massive rate per annum watching it. The closest they come is admitting is that the reserves left is less than half of what has been pumped, and that there's no easy oil left.
Instead we get Scottish patriotic porn - Scotland's innovation, confidence and overall awesomeness and how all the money was stolen by Westminster.
What a waste of effort.
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Truth, Lies, Oil and Scotland was extremely disappointing. Shockingly bad that the BBC could produce such a bias investigation. In an hour long programme about North Sea oil industry’s history and future nothing was mentioned about the peak in production, the fact production is approximately half what it was a decade ago, the fact we’re now a net importer...
And to come out with such absurd statements as there being 25bn barrels left – conservative estimate, that the price should be $35-40 were it not for speculation, that there’s as much to produce again as we’ve produced in the past is very irresponsible.
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There was one section on how new companies and new technology were driving North Sea growth. Much was made of the tremendous success Apache had had with the Forties field. It was stated that production was up to 66,000 barrels per day. The problem was that no context was provided.
Here's what that tremendous success looks like:
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The BBC has never taken the public's license fee in order to inform them.
It was set up to convey the viewpoint of the elite and fake impartiality in order to control the masses.
The intellectual bankruptcy of it's pretensions has never troubled them, as long as they get the loot, especially by issuing gross threats to the poorest in society should they miss their poll-tax.
Old records that have been released make it quite clear that there concern has always been with 'avoiding causing public alarm' and so forth, never with telling the plain old-fashioned truth.
In this case the thought that we might be short of oil might cause alarm, so is an obvious victim of the BBC's filtering.
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The idiocy starts with the notion of "how long will it last" and "running out"
anybody using such questions basically doesn't understand the problem.
when analysts say this sort of thing and some numpty comes along and says "see no problem" they have placed themselves in the "haven't got a clue" camp
its not just the false projections on the amount of oil that need refuting but the actual mode of argument.. given their own numbers they are idiots.
take reserve growth.... right.. well first off to the layman its just a minefield of misinformation. Do you argue trying to wrestle with with all the different standards of reserve booking and backdating
or do you just side step the whole nonsense for the sake of simplicity.
just pointing out that reserves only "grow" on paper and the amount of oil in the ground only decreases with production. the thing that really "grows" from a production POV is our ability to pull it out of the ground. reserve booking creates the impression there is "somehow" more oil
the amount of oil in the ground is the amount of oil in the ground.. thats something your average joe can get.. now I know for all you technically aware dudes you going to talk URR and all that but you need to dumb down yet remain insightful
if your talking to the man on the street you need to slice through this reserve issue with an axe and just stop the argument in its tracks..
basically as soon as someone says "reserves" on one of these talking head shows or articles they need to be taken out and shot in the back of the head
Odell is an absolute shocker
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I watched the doc last night - it was so bad I don't know where to start (spent an hour with my head in my hands saying "oh for f**ks sake").
On the plus side: the UK oil industry is an incredible technological and economic success story and we don't hear nearly enough about it. The doc redresses some of that balance, and included some interesting history. And the soundtrack was good.
On the negative side:
- as others have noted, no sign whatsoever of the peak in production. Nada. Zip. Were they unaware of this basic fact? Did they think it was irrelevant, or wouldn't interest the audience? Or does somebody have an agenda?
- numbers were often rattled off without any context. For example, how does X million barrels compare to daily Scottish, UK or global consumption? How does current production compare with past production? A chart is a good way to show that .. but then a chart would show a peak (or two). I think I see their problem.
- what graphics they did use were laughably confusing and uninformative. When they showed the equation for energy content of a barrel of oil I almost choked.
- while it's interesting to know that oil costs less than a bottle of Evian, that just shows how expensive mineral water is. Try comparing it to tap water (though that's also meaningless).
- I think Legget's comment on the "supply crunch" was taken out of context. She was talking about the North Sea, while I suspect he was referring to global supply. And "crunch" is ambiguous - he certainly didn't mean to imply that the North Sea would run dry.
- the focus on reserves, covered by others above, is completely misleading. The final talking head mentioned that the first oil field in Canada was still producing 150 years on - about 100 barrels a day. Excuse me if I don't dash out to buy Talisman shares.
- They talked to McCrone, but never once mentioned the McCrone report. Perhaps it was a condition of the interview, but what a missed opportunity.
- What were the "Lies" and what was the "Truth"? I saw precious little of either, but plenty of speculation.
I came away with the impression that this was basically a campaign ad for the SNP. The past oil bonanza bankrolled Thatcherism (and Thatcher is bad - Scots hated Thatcher. Showing footage of her press secretary Bernard Ingham to a Scot is like waving a red rag in front of a stickleback). There's plenty of oil remaining and lots of potential tax revenue, and if Scotland had a sniff of it (like those canny Shetlanders) we'd be as rich as Croesus.
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My response to the Daily Mail :
>>This piece cannot go unanswered.
The UKCS peaked in 1999 and has fallen since. All of the major finds in the UKCS have followed typical production profiles and all are now producing oil at significantly lower rates of production. It is typical of an Oil Province to find and produce the larger fields first. This was true of the North Sea with such finds as Forties, Ninian, Brent and Magnus. New finds and new technology applied to mature and depleted fields cannot offset the depletion curve that impacts overall UK production and consequently, UK overall production will fall year on year. This fall in production is irreversible.
There may be minor new fields here and there. There may be a few fields in the Atlantic Margin, but to quote Odell and believe that there may be 30 billion additional barrels of reserves is frankly madness. The UK as an oil province has passed peak. So too has Norway , Denmark and Holland. It will be more or less over for the UKCS by 2025.<<
Wade in as you see fit.
This whole strategy starting with the Sunday Times Article by Millar and culminating in last nights agitpropoganda is new and disturbing.
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Salmond:
He kicked off the referendum campaign for Independence last night with the promise of untold riches. It started last night and Salmond will play this out in full.
There is a general election in about 2 years time. He will look for a Scottish mandate based on last night and will look for a tax grab in the meantime.
Odell:
Has spent his life saying we will never run out of carbon fuels and is therefore unlikely to say 'All my life's work is wrong'
Kemp.
He is hardly going to say its game over by 2020. - What would that do to student numbers in 'Petroleum Economics'?
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The unrealistic forecasts by Odell etc are all over the UK press today; Prof Kemp is also extensively quoted and one of his more telling statements (which I'm not sure the journalists properly understand) is that the average size of the estimated 300 fields not yet in production is sub 20m bbls.
If we use the same R/P ratio as Buzzard the above fields would struggle to produce more than 7k bbls/day each...and steep declines would set in after around 4 years. Not least the fields would have to be clustered close together to have any chance of necessary (huge) infrastructure investments being made...and due to poor ERoEI I doubt that would change much at $500 oil. We only have to look at NW Hutton field which was tied in to existing infrastructure (Brent p/l) and yet both the operator and DTI saw fit to abandon it at a time of sharply rising oil prices. I don't know its final flowrates but in the late 90's it was still producing 6k bbls/day i.e. not much less than average potential of Kemp's 300 fields. If NW Hutton couldn't run with existing infrastructure what chance for many of those stranded fields?
In the meantime todays Aberdeen Press and Journal continues to clamour for a major upgrade of the A9 Perth / Inverness trunk road and for an 'energy development corridor' for all of the 30 miles between Aberdeen and Peterhead which, unsurprisingly, no longer has a rail connection. The P&J has also been heavily promoting the AWPR, a major ($800m+) road around Aberdeen for which the Scottish Government have denied objectors at the forthcoming public inquiry from referencing future traffic studies, energy supplies or CO2 emissions.
Journalism of the type seen in parts of the BBC programs and wider press does us no favours by focussing on nonsense such as 'around half of N Sea reserves remain to be extracted'. The problem is that such reporting will influence decision makers at local and national level most of whom have far less knowledge energy matters than many on this forum. In short such reporting makes it more likely that we will build yet more roads and runways at a time when we should be re-designing our infrastructure to reflect the energy-scarce world into which we are rapidly headed (and that's not to mention the coming UK trade deficit as we try to import energy to maintain BAU).
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Odell is the kind of "expert" the BBC wheels out so they can show "balance". In the same way until recently they would always feature Myron Ebell on radio 4's Today programme to spread his disinformation about climate change to "balance" the scientist with the bad news message. They've stopped doing it now. How soon until peak oil moves on in the same way? I'd say about 2 years from now when declines will probably be a bit more difficult to disguise.
Chris and Euan were sincere, academic and forthright as you would expect. A little nervous, but what the hell. Sincere forthright academics dont give good face.
Odell : Well, what can I say? . A mummified economist. A dangerous liar at best.
I intended to tape the bimbo and watch newsnight, but decided it wasnt worth the electrons. Watched Newsnight and switched back to the bimbo.
The bimbo came up to expectations wrt the piece in the Sunday Times Eccosse section.
Expect no questions in the house.
For my money?
Peak was declared in the UK tonight.
Sad bit?
It interviewed people who do know better. But if there is a pay cheque involved people will believe in Atlantis.
Still...
not every night that PO gets full billing. Who here would believe that two years ago?
Simmons was right.
2008.
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[-] gordonbrewer on June 5, 2008 - 12:37pm
I presented the newsnight scotland programme which has been discussed here.
first of all, i should thank euan mearns for appearing on the programme. incidentally we found eauan in aberdeen because we were familiar with the oil drum site, so you are making waves.
i've found the discussion here fascinating. could i just make a few points:
1) bbc scotland has broadcast a week of programmes connected with the oil industry. hence the cross reference to the documentary.
2) i accept that talking about "the oil running out" is a simplification. But as you guys are probably more aware than most, this is a very complicated area and it's difficult to present in a simple way to a TV audience. I think in the body of the interviews we tried to take the discussion on to a more complex level.
3) i agree euan did not have enought time. i would have been happy to continue the discussion for another ten minutes or so. but that's tv scheduling for you.
4)as for your correspondents' views on whether i understood the issues or asked the right questions, well that is for them to judge rather than me. but i do reject the idea that i was somehow deliberately asking "anti-peak oil" questions of chris skrebowski. the WHOLE POINT of doing an interview is to put contrary points of view so that the interviewee can outline their ideas or be challenged on them. in the interview with chris, i'm sure he would agree it was more the former than the latter.
sadly, the chances of settling debates which consume hundreds of thousands of words on your website are slim.
very much enjoy reading the oil drum!
gb
[-] DaveMart on June 5, 2008 - 1:28pm
Thanks for joining in the discussion.
I think it is fair to say that most here found some of your questioning to the point, especially when you asked if speculation was the cause of the price rises, what was happening to the oil?
Many also remarked that you had obviously been reading up on the issue.
The problem then is not with your presentation.
It is with the assumptions which lay behind the program and especially the radio program.
The BBC has a duty to try to convey a balanced viewpoint.
It was nowhere made clear that oil was being produced at half the volume as at peak, that there is now a large deficit and that the augmentations of existing fields are comparatively tiny.
Also the Governments own projections of likely future extraction from the North Sea was ignored, in favour of a wildly optimistic projection of as much oil remaining as has already been extracted.
The chances of that are vanishingly small, the costs huge.
So the overall impression given by the programs were entirely misleading.
We accept that the issues have to be presented for a more general interest non-expert audience, but the balance of likely resources was wildly skewed.
Perhaps you would call the same participants back in a years time, and see how their predictions have fared.
You might ask the optimists where the oil is.
No-one in the media who always refer to the head of CERA as an expert has ever called him to account for his completely inaccurate predictions.
[-] mididoctors on June 5, 2008 - 2:37pm
I thought you did ok and its not your role to make the argument so to speak
but..... there lies the problem.. you have to understand this issue to allow the debate and presentation to be balanced
and I can see how this is a dilemma for the impartial holy cows of broadcast journalism because essentially once you "get it" your bias towards... well the truth!
thats a real square peg in a round hole situation you have on your hands there.
Having Odell up on screen even as a clip is pretty much equivalent to debating history with David Icke on one side and AJP taylor on the other and giving them both equal billing.
I don't envy your position but the weight on your shoulders on this absurdly unreported issue is .. is what? .. well the phrase "of monumental world importance" is not an understatement
we need to revisit this issue with an in depth probe of the cornucopian position and their motivations to paint a rosy picture.. every one likes a tale of lies and deciet...
well their you go
there is a trail of absurdity and denial going back to Hubbert and the USGS in the early 60's through to the great OPEC reserve debacle of the 80's and onto to simmons calling aramco out at CSIS in 2003
at which point the abiotic oil thing appeared all over the net
you guys are the journalists you join the dots...
why does a man like Odell get awards from OPEC?
there's a story
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