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Petroleum Drilling and Production in the United States: Yield per Effort and Net Energy Analysis
Abstract
For the past three decades the quantity of petroleum (both oil and oil plus gas) found per foot of drilling effort in the
United States for any given year can be expressed as a secular decrease of about 2 percent per year combined with an inverse
function of drilling effort for that year. Extrapolation of energy costs and gains from petroleum drilling and extraction
indicates that drilling for domestic petroleum could cease to be a net source of energy by about 2004 at low drilling rates
and by 2000 or sooner at high drilling rates, and that the net yield will be less at higher drilling rates.
... In the process of net energy analysis, energy return on investment (EROI) is an important efficiency indicator, which represents the ratio of energy output to energy input. Because the calculation method is simple and easy to understand, EROI has been widely used in energy production efficiency, such as oil and gas extraction (Hall and Cleveland 1981;Grandell et al. 2011;Aucott and Melillo 2013;Hu et al. 2013;Wang et al. 2017), renewable energy generation (Kittner et al. 2016;Pickard 2017) and comparison of different energy (Raugei et al. 2012;Cheng et al. 2018;Kong et al. 2018a;Brockway et al. 2019). However, many results cannot be compared directly due to difference of boundary and level. ...
Net energy is the surplus energy after subtracting energy production input, which is regarded as the energy that really promotes social development. At present, a large amount of net energy analysis is concentrated in the preliminary production stage, and there are few deeper studies on energy system. This study mainly uses input–output analysis to estimate energy input (including import input, energy loss and embodied energy), and calculates EROI and Net Energy Supply of energy system in China from 1990 to 2018. The results show that EROI has shown a downward trend in the past. Among all energy sectors, Production and Supply of Electric Power and Heat Power accounts for the highest proportion of energy input, and the proportion of energy loss is gradually increasing. In addition, this study uses the simulated function to establish the relationship between net energy and GDP and makes an outlook of net energy supply and EROI in different scenarios. EROI is likely to decline in the near future, and more attention should be paid to the efficient use of net energy to achieve economic goals.
... The analysis of EROEI has been developed mainly by Charles Hall and has been used in a range of applications, from oil extraction to the wealth of nations [10][11][12]. Over the years, this simple ratio has been elaborated in several directions. ...
This paper presents a critical comparison of EROEI and Relational Analysis applied to the Mexican Oil and Gas sector. Energy return on energy investment (EROEI) is used in this paper as an example to flag the problem that arises when data are aggregated into a simple ratio, leading to the loss of a significant amount of meaningful information. In contrast to that approach, this paper shows how Relational Analysis is helpful for policy discussion and for embracing complexity by means of adopting a variety of categories of accounting across different levels and dimensions, characterizing the relationships among the different metabolic patterns of the different components, and integrating inequivalent views of the same system: a structural (bottom-up) and a functional (top-down).
... D'autre part, il convient également d'écarter des contributions importantes à l'étude des ux de matière et d'énergie qui ne se préoccupent pas directement de la représentation formelle de la production. Parmi ces dernières, on trouve la tradition qui se situe dans le sillage d'Odum, notamment celle qui s'intéresse au retour sur investissement énergétique (Hall et al., 1979;Hall et Cleveland, 1981;Cleveland et al., 1984). On trouve également des programmes de recherches qui se sont inspirés des travaux respectifs de Georgescu-Roegen et Ayres. ...
Cette thèse examine les questions méthodologiques soulevées par la prise en compte de la dimension physique du processus économique dans la théorie économique. Pour cela, elle s'intéresse principalement à la conception thermodynamique de l'économie, développée notamment par Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen et Robert Ayres. Plus précisément, cette thèse étudie la façon dont la conception thermodynamique de l'économie s'incarne dans deux représentations formelles de la production, la théorie néo-thermodynamique et la théorie flux-fonds, et comment ces approches se confrontent à la théorie néoclassique des ressources. Pour appréhender les enjeux méthodologiques associés à ces diverses théories, la thèse met l'accent sur les questions liées à la modélisation et à l'interdisciplinarité. Elle montre que la théorie néoclassique des ressources et la théorie néo-thermodynamique partagent une même conception de la modélisation, qui se traduit par le recours aux fonctions de production agrégées. Or, cette représentation de la production se révèle inadéquate pour rendre compte de la dimension physique de la production, tant sur le plan conceptuel que sur le plan empirique. La théorie flux-fonds constitue au contraire une rupture méthodologique radicale vis-à-vis de la fonction de production agrégée. Elle s'avère plus à même d'appréhender la dimension physique de la production d'un point de vue conceptuel, mais souffre d'un manque d'application. Dans l'ensemble, la thèse montre que les enjeux méthodologiques liés à la modélisation devraient faire l'objet de davantage d'attention lorsqu'il s'agit de rendre compte de la dimension physique du processus économique.
Our present world is the consequence of the size of the human population and its domination of the biosphere through the combustion of fossil fuels. Since ~1950, there has been a sudden increase in the rate of human global energy consumption, economic productivity, and population growth. This abrupt departure of the system dynamics has been defined as the "Great Acceleration." The accelerated population and economic expansion during the past 70 years would have been impossible without using fossil fuels. However, no studies have made an explicit connection between human population dynamics on a global scale and historical changes in energy consumption growth rates, economic growth, and the energy return on investment of fossil fuels (EROI). In this study, I apply a simple population dynamic model of cooperation/competition to decipher the effects of changes in these factors on the dynamics of the human population during the period (1800-2020).
The Energy Return On Investment (EROI) has proven to be an useful concept in the last 50 years. However, given the urgent need of the energy transition to deal with climate change, its frontier of application and concept must be extended to include the requirement for CO2 capture from fossil fuel combustion (or the exergy associated with this work). This study applies a novel concept, the Exergy Return on Environment and Energy Investment (ExROEEI). It considers the quality of energy and extends the frontier of analysis to incorporate the exergy associated with removing CO2 from fuel combustion and with the environmental effects of effluent streams. This allows assessing fossil fuel sources that are converted to meet energy services but have to comply with the need to limit CO2 emissions. By applying this extended concept to a coal-based power plant equipped with amine-based post-combustion CO2 capture, our findings show that the ExROEEI reaches a 2.06:1 ratio, being the outlet exergy of the plant 250.52 PJ and its inlet exergy 121.46 PJ (the exergy associated with capturing and compressing the CO2 represents 35.58% of this figure). Therefore, the exergy surplus of this option is lower, which raises questions about its energy feasibility.
https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1hYcl1H%7Ec%7ELi5T
This chapter presents generalized pinch analysis principles for energy planning, which involve the optimal matching of sources and sinks (or demands) using diverse measures of energy quality such as carbon, land, and water footprints, emergy, inoperability, and energy return on investment. These indices provide numerical measures of the quality of energy streams allocated between sources and sinks within various contexts. Some common principles apply to all such systems, allowing a two-phase insight-based pinch analysis approach comprising targeting (benchmarking with first principles) followed by determining of the optimal energy allocation network. Six different examples are solved here to illustrate the application of these energy planning composite curves.
Has peak oil production already occurred? The end of cheap and easy oil ended in 2005 when conventional oil plateaued, with production leveling off since then. From now on the cost and difficulty of obtaining oil will increase. What is saving us now is unconventional tight “fracked” oil, but costs are higher than conventional oil extraction. And unlike conventional oil fields, fracked fields have a much shorter lifespan. An overview of the future of conventional oil, giant oil fields, light and heavy oil, shale “fracked” oil, tar sands, Venezuela’s heavy oil and their EROI, flow rate, declining discovery, current decline rate, and where the remaining oil makes it clear that the Age of Easy Oil has ended.
Modifications are presented to the Hubbert and Zapp methods for estimation of the supply of randomly located resources and estimates have been made by these revised methods of the current state of the search problem. A new energy based attack on the plowback ratio is proposed which offers more meaningful predictive possibilities than the current purely economic approach.
Expectations about future oil availability and ultimate conventional world oil resources play a major role in shaping energy policy proposals. However, considerable disagreement exists both about oil availability and ultimately recoverable conventional world oil resources, hampering efforts to reach agreement on energy policies. The absence of consensus is the result both of several economic, technical, and geologic uncertainties that cannot be currently resolved and of a failure to exploit existing public information about world oil resources. Data and information are presented designed to narrow the debate to the inescapable range of uncertainty and to assess the conventional known and prospective recoverable oil resources of the world primarily by describing and analyzing the giant oil fields of the world. Because these fields, usually defined as those with an ultimate recovery of 500 million barrels or more, contain more than 75% of the known recoverable oil resources of the world, a comprehensive examination of them provides an efficient means of assessing world oil resources. The giant fields of the world are listed and the means used to identify them and determine their size are described. Several aspects of the worldwide distribution of known recoverable oil resources are discussed, focusing on the role of giant fields in each type of distribution. The pattern of discoveries of giant fields since petroleum exploration began is described and the range of ultimately recoverable conventional world oil resources is estimated.
Interior Insular Affairs Series
- M K Hubbert
- Comm