Oil production ramp-up times

Interesting data from a poster named Taskforce_Unity on the PeakOil.Com site.:

Average field distribution from 100 projects announced to be taken on-stream between the period 2005-2010 (taken from my own report, launch date now set at the end of October due to media-related reasons).


This analysis showed that:

• 23% of the projects were EOR projects (ed: ennhanced oil recovery)
• 12% of the projects were discovered before 1980
• 7% of the projects were discovered between 1980 and 1989
• 29% of the projects were discovered between 1990 and 1999
• 18% of the projects were discovered between 2000 and 2004
• 11% of the projects were unconventional projects (tar sands and orinoco heavy oil)

This kind of data helps calibrate predictions as it includes estimates of the rolled up average value for how long a field stays in the fallow + development phases from the shock model. Not extremely revelatory at the moment, but it does show the significant average lag and fairly wide stochastic distribution about the mean that I used in fits to global production data. Khebab noted that these appeared to follow a Gamma law (sic) distribution. In fact, the gamma distribution follows from the convolution of two or more exponentials, which in fact matches at least the first two of the three exponential phases, Fallow, Development, and Maturation, that the shock model required as parametric inputs.

Gamma distributions of various orders