I never think of decline rates, only in terms of extraction rates in proportion to the current reserve value. My current Oil Shock Model uses a value of 3.8% for the extraction rate value. The decline rate will only equal the extraction rate if discoveries stop tomorrow.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3287

Historically, global extraction rates have been higher than 4%, but during the 1970's we started to get smart and stopped treating oil like water. If that number is going up again, the desperation measures might be starting to kick in.

Throttling back extraction be damned, turning the spigots full-on will create a plateau but then it will drop like a rock.

Here is a hypothetical example of what happens when you throttle up, the plateau can extend, but at a severe price and clearly it can't be sustained.

Alan must be reading to many of my comments :)
Sometimes I wonder if I'm responsible for the destruction of the English language.

It'll be interesting to see if they have adjusted this position in WEO 2008

I think the IEA will adjust their position in WEO 2008 if they can get third party audited production and reserves data from all of the OPEC countries. However, I doubt that countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Iran will provide this data.

If you want a more realistic position by the IEA, chapter 7 of their WEO 1998 is worth reading.
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/publications/free_new_Desc.asp?PUBS_ID=1244

The 1998 WEO is significant because it was published prior to the IEA becoming heavily influenced by the USGS 2000 Petroleum Assessment study which stated that there were huge amounts of oil yet to be discovered.
http://www.oilcrisis.com/laherrere/usgs2000/

The new study was awaited with anticipation in the hope that it would be a definitive assessment, based on a very through evaluation of every petroleum system, but the result has been a great disappointment. It is replete with contradictions and downright errors.

In short, the new USGS report is misleading. It is also unrepresentative of the normal standards of this highly respected organisation.

One is left to wonder if there is not a hidden agenda, given current US concerns regarding oil supply, price, and growing OPEC control. The timing of the USGS press release on the eve of a critical OPEC meeting would certainly be consistent with such an interpretation.

A realistic scenario in the WEO 1998 was shown by the chart below. It forecast about 90 mbd total liquids in 2008. There was one part of the chart which was overly optimistic: demand of 130 mbd in 2030 would be satisfied mainly by 90 mbd of unconventional oil and NGLs.

A few modifications to the chart above produces a more realistic chart below. The dashed blue line shows forecast total liquids production. Forecast unconventional oil and NGLs have been reduced and a demand supply gap added. I'm hoping that the IEA will show a chart, similar to the one below, in their WEO 2008, but I remain doubtful.

My total liquids forecast below is similar to the dashed blue line in the modified IEA total liquids forecast above.

click to enlarge

Khebab,

For some reason I am perhaps missing, the graph looks a bit off with those observed EIA data points. The plateau looks like its at 81 mbpd yet the data shows the plateau at around 84 mbpd, whats the deal here? Is the Y axis messed up or am I just missing something simple.

Thanks,
Crews

Reuters today on Kashagan

Scaroni added that he was more optimistic of first oil in 2013 after a deal with the government.

(receding horizons, a work in progress)

Taleb would probably say that this is actually Extremistan and not Mediocristan - a single Black Swan like Kashagan can throw a monkey wrench in all sorts of models and projections.

I saw that back 3 years ago, wanting to drill in the depleted fields of Ohio: most of the infrastructure was retired and the stuff you could get was much too expensive. Drilling just wasn't worth it like it was in the 70s.
Cheers, Dom

Just a note on the increasing decline rate from 4% to 5.2%.
The although most of the large fields are in decline its reasonable to expect most of them to have a fairly stable decline rate for some time. As far as I know the status of most of the large fields has not changed substantially.

Therefore if we continue to see the global decline rate increase I suspect the culprit is that since we have not had replacement of reserves for some time the rapid decline of small fields 10%+ without replacement is starting to effect the total decline rate. We can expect that it will only increase overtime at first until enough of the small fields are no longer making a contribution.

They contribute about 14% or the worlds oil or about 11mbd so we can expect if this is the cause for the decline rate to steadily increase until we are down say 10-15 mbd before moderating and finally reducing. It will keep going up as the smaller fields get further past peak and decline faster and larger fields also begin to decline etc.

Time will tell of course but I don't see increases in global decline rate of this magnitude coming from the worlds large oil fields but from the small ones going in decline without replacement.

Thanks Ace ! ( or should I say shut the f*** up Ace ? )

This added info here comes across as nerve wrecking to me. Obviously there are a few places around yet to be explored, but this PO-thing is about speed and capacity, receding horizons et al, so there it sits.
As I see it we must just hope there are more oil in ME than some believe AND that it reaches the marketplace in an orderly fashion in comming years. Brazil must have faith .... and stay at it.

If these Megaproject-surveys are in the vicinity of reality - I feel I have to adopt this Olduvai theory now rather than later. I mean this socalled Globalization is in for an abrupt end during few years and more with it ....

Ahh but 6GB per year does not do you a lot of good if a significant amount of this is coming from small fields.

Using the CERA report.

http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/news/pressReleases/pressReleaseDeta...

The CERA analysis found significantly different production patterns in large fields vs. small fields. Typically, large fields build up over an average of six years, produce on plateau for seven years at 93 percent of their maximum annual production rate, and decline on average for more than 20 years. In contrast, small fields build up over an average of three years, produce on plateau for five years, and decline on average over more than 14 years.

The problem is that the good production lifetime of a small field about 5 years is not all that different from the time needed to develop the field.

They give a 3 year build up time from the start of production you have to figure at least 2 years between initial discovery and new production at a minimum. Thus even with a optimistic schedule small fields can barely replace themselves.
If your finding less small fields then you did in the past probably in our case at least 50% less then at least 50% of your small field production will cease to contribute say about 10 years after initial discovery.

Taking 1995 as the first halving then this first drop is around 2005 and the second drop is around 2010 taking 2000 as the next big drop in discoveries.
This of course is more the center of a spread of values not a real peak.

The current plateau could easily be explained by the loss of small fields discovered and developed during the 1990's that where not replaced. Lost production from them has been somewhat covered by more intensive production of remaining fields.

In any case the short lifetimes of the small fields and the lack of new discoveries should result in steep decreases in production over the 2005-2020 time period. For the smaller fields you almost have to have two in development for every one thats in production to really keep production level. So new discoveries of smaller fields needs to be about twice the past discoveries just to stay about level. This for sure has not been true for some time. Certainly you could hold off developing about half your known smaller fields and produce at a lower rate and I'm sure that this has happened and has helped us up to now.

But eventually a lot of the small field development from the 80-90's will drop out practically any day now and this is on top of the decline of the giants.

The underlying problem is of course that 14% of the worlds production or 11mbpd is coming from 5% of its reserves this is not stable. Depending on how you do a the math up to 25% of the worlds production is coming from less than 10% of the worlds reserves so it does not get a lot better looking at larger fields.

We do have a bedrock slow decline production of 50%+ coming from the mega fields and of course new projects but this just means that eventually decline rates will slow but we stand a pretty good chance of steep initial decline rates over the next few years.

The backdated discovery profiles will drive anybody crazy that spends any time looking into it. I got to thinking what kind of qualitative thinking goes into deciding whether a reserve addition should be backdated versus being called a new discovery, and came to an absurd conclusion. At some point, some analyst might decide that we sit on one globally-connected reservoir, and the backdating should stretch way back to 1858. And then we will get a Delta discovery function situated at 1858 with a value of 2800 GB. That would really screw us up but it would give the cornucopians plenty of ammo for hyping up reserve growth :)

Actually, seriously :(

Why?
They are on a treadmill.Most of the rigs they have ordered are for reworks.Also,most of their fields are offshore which peak early.

ace...did you see this article in Bloomberg today? Not sure what to make of it. Pipe dream...ha, pun intended!!

Petrobras's Tupi Viable at Third of Current Oil Price

July 3 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleo Brasileiro SA's Tupi field is commercially viable at an oil price as low as $40 to $50 a barrel, according to the Brazilian state-controlled company's chief executive officer.

The field is viable ``in the range of one-third of the current price,'' Petrobras CEO Jose Sergio Gabrielli told reporters today at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid. ``The field is viable at a very reasonable price.''

Oil was trading at $144.96 at 10:23 a.m. today in London.

Discoveries near Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo including Tupi will at least triple Brazil's oil reserves, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a June interview.

Rio de Janeiro-based Petrobras, holder of the Western Hemisphere's largest oil discovery since 1976, has about 13 billion barrels of proved reserves.

Tupi has as much as 8 billion barrels of recoverable oil equivalent, Petrobras said in November. The surrounding pre-salt region may contain as much as 50 billion barrels of oil, according to Peter Wells, director of U.K. research firm Neftex Petroleum Consultants Ltd.

Tupi, located in the Santos Basin southeast of Sao Paulo, may hold enough oil to supply every refinery on the U.S. East Coast for 15 years. The Santos Basin has the potential of ``very high production'' of hydrocarbons, Gabrielli said in a separate presentation earlier today.

According to the Dispersive Discovery Model, it was 10 GB in 2005. The profile shows that it is monotonically decreasing, with the occasional fluctuations up and down from statistical considerations.

Thanks to Ace, Khebab, and others for thoughtful and thorough replies. I will read and digest!

Only if it has not attracted a reply - check the little icons at the top for 'Edit' - hover your mouse over them

Khebab, given there is a five year horizon, I suspect this cut off is not abrupt but somewhat gradual. Hence you might expect a gradual decrease in perceived projects running up to five years. How important is this? Have we all been as concerned as we are now regarding a past megaprojects forecasts that in the end did not justify such concern? This seems to me to be of extreme importance when interpreting this latest work.

People will "keep their heads in the sand" until they are rudely hurled head over heels by the approaching "freight train of economic destruction".

In other words there is a tipping point in public consciousness. At some point everybody gets it.
At some point a crashing housing market, a plunging stock market, and a falling dollar come face to face with $200 or $300 oil, at which point reality crashes through and eveybody "gets it".

15-20% demand destruction then becomes a realistic prospect.

And then some. We'll probably go from complacency to panic in the streets. Gas stations on fire, riots when the police show up to restore order and some idiot starts shooting, "fuel rage" murders in the queue to fill up.

Graph/figures by any chance? Thanks

The products that seem to be declining most are the low valued products - asphalt and residual fuel oil. Gasoline is only off -1.2% for April, and -1.3% for year to date. The reduction in distillate fuel oil (diesel + home heating oil) on a year to date basis is -3.9%. Asphalt is off -13.1% year to date: residual fuel oil is off -21.6% year to date.

Refineries are refining what used to be low valued products into gasoline and distillate.

There was a news story posted in the DB just yesterday that 10 highway projects in the Raleigh NC area are being "postponed" (probably forever, IMHO), so maybe we will start to see some serious cutbacks in the highway expansions.

Do you think that the Federal Government will at some point ban the use of gasoline/diesel - liquid fuels for "recreational purposes" (boating, off roading and sport aviation)? And if so, at what point on the down slope might it happen?

I have to agree with hedgehog the term "depletion rate" is confusing and I consider it a misnomer. I think it has been shortened from "production rate decline as a result of field depletion". So the 3.5 Mb is required to offset the production rate decline of approx 5%, bearing in mind this only applies to oil coming out of fields (not tar sands or biofuels). As discussed here the "depletion rate" is an average and varies from field, depending on geology, production techniques used, and additional development done.

As an example of how scewed the concept of a global decline rate is Cantarell is crashing at a rate north of 20% so it alone will make a significant impact on the 'global decline rate'.

We can only wait for the IEA report at the end of the year.

Neven

Rate of depletion is the rate of reduction in the flow of oil.

This has been gone over a number of times with the confustion between *decline* and *depletion*

An oil field begins depleting when the first oil is pumped and depletion continues until the last oil is pumped. The rate of production typically rises to a plateau, cruises along for a few years, then declines.

depletion <> decline

Possible future supply capacity, is this the same as "possible future production"

Supply Capacity= Amount Produced + Spare Capacity

It's basically the maximum you can produce at a given point in time, some production maybe down for political or geo-political reasons for instance (think Nigeria).

From the megaproject list, you can only forecast supply capacity (i.e. an upper bound on production).

The new mega projects' supply capacities are projected to decline 4.5% after first year. Is this because the reserves are being "depleted" from the start?

No, but because we don't know the exact shape of the production profile for each field, instead of having this:

we use this:

Now, if you have additional information (peak date, plateau duration, URR, etc.), you could use a more complex model such as the one used by Robelius in his PhD thesis:

I'm currently working on a more complex model.

Thanks Khebab, this helps. Thanks again to you and others for the ingenuity and hard work on this. I'm sure you all are read over at DOE, DOD, CIA, etc.

Also, it appears to me from making comparisons that Luis de Sousa's export production decline should be steeper, as it looks to me like it is 4%. If nations are reducing exports for their own consumption, his decline percentage should added to overall decline percentages. I know that you can't answer for him, but maybe Luis, you or someone can clarify.

great job, thanks!

Part of this I believe was Ace's work in trying to assign multiple year projects to the individual years when production is expected to begin. When the spreadsheet was started, I don't think we realized how many of the projects really were very long term. As we got more data, we were able to disaggregate some projects into their expected annual components.

So 2010 might be the last year for net new capacity? That sounds like an extremely important metric, and indeed might be a good one to focus our attention upon.

Will someone please check me on the following "off the top of the head" numbers?
China imports 3 mb/d of oil at $140/b. China sells gasoline at $1.00/gal earning $25/b. Other products bring total revenue/b to $40./b. China loses $100./b or $300M.day or $2B/week. How long can China maintain its subsidies?
Only net exporters can maintain subsidies for long, and even for them the political presure to reduce subsidies will be strong because of the desire to fill the coffers.
Net effects - declining demand growth leading to declining demand soon, and some slowdown in the ELM declines.
Comments?? Murray

This is a great chart, hope you can update it from time to time. Why not use a 5.2% depletion rate? In any event the depletion rate should be accelerating on account of horizontals, deep water etc.

Is there some way to look at past project delays and extrapolate to projects announced for the coming years?

Could supply be reduced to incorporate expected reduced exports?

It would also be useful to see a three year moving average curve to smooth out the net bars, easier to compare with the demand curves.

Great work, TIA for anything you have time for.

Nigeria seems to be having terrorist activity is form of negative two million per day.

With one exception: Iraq. I'm pretty sure, that production there is going to rise approx. 4mbpd within the next 4 years.

On June 30, 2008, Iraq Oil Minister Shahristani hoped that Iraq's production will reach "4.5 mbd by 2013 from its current level of 2.5 mbd".
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article158317.ece

Only a few days later on July 3, 2008, Shahristani "told lawmakers that short-term technical support contracts worth around $3 billion may not get signed" which will limit Iraq's ability to increase oil production.
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article158500.ece

Iraq may have significant remaining oil reserves but extracting that oil is not easy.

Iraq has produced about 32 Gb of crude & condensate to Dec 2007.
OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin http://www.opec.org/library/

The creaming curve for Iraq below indicates a total URR of 130 Gb.

source http://www.oilcrisis.com/iq/iraqLaherrere.pdf

The black line in the chart below shows that Iraq could produce up to 8 mbd peak plateau, assuming no constraints. This is highly unlikely.

Colin Campbell has dropped his forecast peak production rate for Iraq from 4.5 mbd in December 2002 to only 2.65 mbd in June 2008. Campbell's peaks are assumed to peak plateaus in the chart below.
http://www.aspo-ireland.org/index.cfm/page/newsletter

The Iraq Oil Minister hopes that 4.5 mbd can be reached by 2013. The forecast below delays this production rate of 4.5 mbd by one year to 2014.

Given the instability in Iraq and the need to not just drill production wells but also the requirement to build necessary infrastructure, an upper bound peak plateau of 4.5 mbd for Iraq seems reasonable.

euro,

In all probability the Iraq oil will be shipped to Europe given nte cheaper transport. But it will take some price pressure off US purchases. Time will tell. While the operator does have some control over buyer selection you have to remember that all the companies you mentioned have big markets outside the US. For instance, last year I drilled some wells for ExxonMobil offshore Equatorial Guinea (west Africa). All the production was tankered and ship straight to Europe.

If you're concerned about sovereign control of oil deliveries keep an eye on China. They have been buying into oil fields all around the world for years now as well as making big capital investments in new projects. The Chinese gov't will have increasing control over the sourcing of crude buyers in the years to come.

If Yergin had been "right," we'd still only be 25% closer to that 16 million barrels. He must have been drinking the Neo-Con Iraqi-Oil-will-pay-for-the-invasion KoolAid.

Cheers

I purcased my first ever oil-wave-surfboard yesterday, based on this very information. It's has a completely new and unexpected design .... no warranty , but who needs such in times of affluence?

Exactly high shipping costs works both ways and the US also needs to import a wide range of raw materials.

Plus of course we would have to significantly rebuild our industrial base and wages would have to be competitive. Shipping costs are pretty much a wash I suspect.

This is completely different from building stuff for local markets or those reachable by low energy transport using local materials. It becomes efficient assuming wages are basically equal to ship high value goods quite long distances from a vertically integrated source.

This of course is the traditional trade networks with regional specialization allowing you to exploit local resources and produce high value goods. This sort of defacto monopoly has been long destroyed for the most part.

Our children can go back and fill in those missing dates for us.

* Peak discovery: 1964 or so (backdated)
* Peak Light Sweet: 2004 to now (take your pick) [[[[ 2004-2005 ]]]
* Peak conventional: 2008-2012 ??? [[[ 2005 ]]]
* Peak oil industry investments: ? [[[[ 2008-2009 ]]]
* Peak net oil exports: 2011-2013 ? [[[[ 2007 ]]]]
* Peak total net energy from liquids: ? [[[[ 2007 ]]]
* Peak all liquids (C&C+NGL+heav/extra heavy): ? [[[[ 2008 ]]]]
* Peak distillates (gasoline, diesel, etc): ? [[[[ 2005 ]]]]

In not too distant future there will be no one writing history, as they won't have time, and no communications to know what happened after the LAST BLACKOUT. And nothing coming in from the "outside," sorry, no Pony Express, nor telegraph. No power grid = nothing.

It seems likely some refineries will close because they can't get enough throughput to remain commercially viable.

Oligarchic upstream + downstream refineries should prosper.

But don't assume all bigger refineries will be owned by the big oil companies.

If refineries can only exist because they have guaranteed supply, it may be that countries like China are one of the 'last man standing' refiners.

Maybe national producers will have to send oil to producing nation-state refiners such as China and Saudi Arabia, rather than oligarchic oil company refineries that have lost their company-owned feedstock backing. Maybe those that still own functioning refineries will dictate the price of crude...

And maybe some small refineries that don't require numerous and large cargoes to run will exist as 'niche' refineries for small-volume oil fields.

Things will get complex.

Lorenzo

Please explain the reason we can't build 100,000,000 battery powered electric cars every year till we replace the world gasoline fleet?
I know that we don't have enough lithium, cobalt, nickel, lead, etc. Most of the readers don't. But if you don't explain, they won't get it.
Call them battery cars, not electric cars. It reframes the discussion in a more usefull way.

You're so right cjwirth... I'll pass on one of the worst examples of public disinformation I've seen lately. On Fox Business TV they had a fellow on proclaiming that the chips he makes for the gaming toys will greatly enhance the computation powers of seismic exploration 6X the current standard. Even if you're not in the oil biz but have a little common sense you can probably guess the current computing level in the oil biz. I'm sitting in front of a seismic computer workstation right now. Just a desk top set up but probably several orders of magnitude greater than this guy’s chips. And then compare that to ExxonMobil et al Krays that are many orders of magnitude above me.

It would have been truly laughable except for the realization that many watching would believe this "new technology" could now help the oil industry drill us out of PO.

The Fox reporter didn't even attempt to challenge this guy's claims. Very sad indeed.

"but the masses are ignorant"

You are not ignorant, though. I see you charge $100 an hour to converse on the phone with you about peak oil. Very good. Do we get a refund if we school you?

How does that work? If I teach you about peak oil in the hour, do you send me a check?

Answer fast, because people are going to start calling.

Any minute now.

Do you get much business?

Read the TOD rules.

In case this wasn't clear -

Number 9 (it's always number nine that kills you guys, isn't it)

"Using comments to promote products and services for sale is prohibited."

You copied and pasted some bullshit work of yours from here to Huffington Post. Adding your webpage, which clearly sets fees of $100 an hour.

Get lost, clown.

This is San Francisco specific, but "scales" well to other locations when thinking about any or all alternatives (pdf): Scalability, Timing, and Alternatives. A few folks elsewhere have told me they found it very helpful.

I think that Matthew Simmons and Kenneth Deffeyes are correct with the peak crude oil at May 2005. The EIA includes Canadian tar sands in crude oil, and it is not crude oil, as it cannot be pumped out of the ground. The DOE and EIA are captives of big oil, and they don't directly lie about the data, but they change the categories so that things look better for the oil industry. It’s good for business and investing if people think all is well, and better for the stock options of oil company executives. This confirms the 4th Law of Thermodynamics: all oil companies, both private and national, are pirates. :)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/appc.html
EIA APPENDIX GLOSSARY: Crude Oil: "A mixture of hydrocarbons that exists in liquid phase in natural underground reservoirs and remains liquid at atmospheric pressure after passing through surface separating facilities. Depending upon the characterics of the crude stream, it may also include:

1. Small amounts of hydrocarbons that exist in gaseous phase in natural underground reservoirs but are liquid at atmospheric pressure after being recovered from oil well (casinghead) gas in lease separators and are subsequently commingled with the crude stream without being separately measured. Lease condensate recovered as a liquid from natural gas wells in lease or field separation facilities and later mixed into the crude stream is also included;
2. Small amounts of nonhydrocarbons produced with the oil, such as sulfur and various metals;
3. Drip gases, and liquid hydrocarbons produced from tar sands, oil sands, gilsonite, and oil shale."

My guess is that Matt Simmons is pessimistic about future prediction because he factors in production factors, like the number of rigs, their age, personnel, interest in investing, the monetary quagmire that is the U.S. economy, as well as what is happening in the field. For sometime he has said that the whole infrastructure of the oil production is flimsy. and now we see that the U.S. economy is even flimsier. Peak Oil impacts are here.

Even much of oil that has been defined as recoverable will probably not be recovered, for this reason:

When the amount of oil used to produce a barrel of oil equals the amount of oil produced, it is pointless to continue oil production. In addition to the oil used on site to produce and refine oil, energy is used in all of the processes for the machinery, equipment, and personnel used in the extraction, transport, and refining processes. For deepwater oil production, this would include all of the ships, platforms, steel piping (many kilometers of pipes on-site and to onshore locations), and their employees, including the energy used in making the hundreds of thousands of parts, the energy used in the factories that make the parts, the energy used in transportation of all of the parts and employees, as well as the energy that is consumed when employees and stockholders spend their salaries or dividends on goods and services (food, automobiles, yachts, airplanes, recreation vehicles, vacations, consumer purchases, etc.). Because there are a number of confounded energy input variables, it is difficult to measure all of this consumption of energy, but it is an economic reality that is shown in corporate decisions about the profitability of deepwater oil projects. For deepwater, heavy oil, tar sands, and extraction where special techniques are used, the point at which energy consumed in production equals the energy produced will be reached rapidly. For this reason, some oil that is classified as recoverable (for example deepwater oil, heavy oil, and the Bakken formation) may never be recovered.

Cheers,

Clifford J. Wirth

memmel - You are assuming much my friend.

I personally do not drive my V-6 much (less than 3,000 miles per year) and do not even own an A/C unit. I do not need it.

So do not chastise me.

I am simply trying to see what impact less usage has on the graph.

Thank you.

8.1 Demand destruction reduces global consumtionp 10% (as it did in the 80's)

See my posts this was from NG the only valid substitute for oil.

8.2 Saudi reduces exports to maintan prices for OPEC (as it did in the 80's)
Saudi is setting on a lot of heavy sour crude thats worthless without cheap NG.
Ghawar one of the main sources of lighter sweet crudes is in interesting shape.

8.3 Saudi opens wells up and flood the market (as it did in in 1986)
With what heavy sour crudes and at what price you can't give the stuff away.

8.4 Oil prices drop 70% from its peak (as it did in 1986)
Nope.

8.5 Low oil prices induce increased consumption (as it did 1986 - 1996)
Double nope.

No Suadi will eventually be forced to sell heavy sour crudes at a steep discount so the parts of the crude
will be used to refine the rest. Basically two barrels of heavy sour without NG gives 1 barrel of sweet light. As NG approaches parity with Oil its to expensive to burn to refine the crappy crudes.

This of course drops overall output of final products by 50% from the remaining heavy sour supplies.
In this extreme scenario we have effectively lost 50% of our remaining reserves.

I don't see cheap prices.

Number 9 will not be 2020 but much later as rarely used roads will last 30 years plus (and with few cars in the global depression this will apply to most roads).

Last I checked roads degrade significantly just from environmental factors. I disagree completely with this argument. On the cost side its the bridges that are important. Once the bridges degrade you have a lot of roads to nowhere.

My best guess is that as asphalt covered roads develop to many potholes the asphalt will be recycled to use on critical roads and the road reverted to gravel. If it has to many bridges it may be abandoned altogether.

In general I tend to agree with you.

Right now in my opinion in the wealthier countries what we will see is a destruction of the car centric suburban life style and associated with it a general and significant drop in the standard of living at least as measured today. For those able to view life a different way people may well find themselves happier.
The key is that you can never actually go below zero money at any point you can repudiate your debts and start over. Outside of course of tax liens and student loans but even student loan debt has some outs and collection approaches are limited.

As a poor college student I'd say overall I lead a happier life. I did go in debt and am now debt free and back happy but thats just prudent living from being burned.

If food actually becomes problematic then thats a entirely different issue and kettle of fish. But overall Europe, South America and the US/Cananda should easily be able to continue to feed themselves.

I advocate a garden for two reasons first even if food is available its likely to be expensive and second temporary shortages may develop. If you want to be a organic farmer from what I've seen most of these people seem pretty happy if they don't have a high debt load. If you can do it without taking on a lot of debt then its a rewarding life.

Third world I dunno I don't see resource imperialism stopping and if anything it will get worse also in general the overall political climate will get chaotic at best and a return to old colonial concepts is probably certain. Look at Zimbabwe for example regardless of the reasons for there problems they overload any attempt to stabilize the economy or the country. The addition of more external meddling will only cause more problems in many parts of the world.

Eventually of course who knows when these countries will finally stabilize but I fear only after great loss of life.