Jay Hanson's energyresources list (http://www.egroups.com/group/energyresources ) has turned into a good site for tracking the fate of big oil, mainly because of the presence there of authoritative voices like Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere, 2 oil geologists who last year singlehandedly persuaded the International Energy Authority to adopt a new, more realistic and somewhat pessimistic assumption about the size of global reserves. This exchange about new Caspian finds may be of interest: > I'd be interested to know what Listers think about reports of > possible large new Caspian offshore oil deposits. the Caspian basin > has seen reports ranging from the Wall Street's Journal's surely > wildly overoptimistic forecatse of 190bn bbls of recoverable oil, to > suggestions by I think Colin Campbell and others that reserves may > total 19bn bbls; until recently the consensus > seemed to be that the Caspian was at best another North Sea, not > another Persian Gulf. Is this another false dawn? > > Mark Jones > http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList Press reports, which seem now to reflect a certain authority, speak of a major discovery in Kashagan East, rumoured to be larger than Teghiz which has about 8 Gb. It is too early to know for sure. The prospect is very large, but only parts of it may have adequate reservoirs, and the extent of the criticial salt seal is not sure. My current estimate gives the Caspoian offshore 23 Gb (billion barrels), which I think is ample cover for the present discovery, but we must await appraisal drilling to be sure. To give a sense of proportion, 12 Gb would supply the world for six months. The Caspian was of course one of the earliest known oil provinces, but the offshore was not explored by the Soviets. How soon this new oil will reach western markets remains uncertain, but it is by all means a promising development best regards Colin Campbell ------------------------------------- Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
