Dec 27 2010

Global oil wealth to rise by 2trn barrels

Saudi Aramco says world has 14trn barrels of crude but are mostly inaccessible
New technology in the future could boost the world's proven oil resources by nearly two trillion barrels but more than five times of these quantities could remain inaccessible, according to Saudi Aramco .

Although the current global oil reserves in place are estimated at 14 trillion barrels, only about 1.2 trillion can be recovered, said Khaled Al Buraik, executive director of the government-controlled Saudi Aramco .

Speaking at a seminar in Riyadh, Buraik said the quantity of oil extracted so far worldwide does not exceed one trillion barrels.

"Advanced technology in hydrocarbon production could add around two trillion barrels to the existing proven crude reserves in the near future," he said in his address, published by Saudi newspapers on Monday.

"The real challenge for scientists and engineers is how to access to nearly 11.8 trillion barrels to meet the growing world needs of hydrocarbon in the future...what is needed now is more effort by scientists and specialists in this field to invent new methods and very advanced technology."

Buraik said such efforts are needed to cater for a rapid rise in global oil demand, expected at around 40 per cent in the next 20 years. He said the rise in demand would be a result of technological developments and increase in the global population to nine billion in 2030 and 11 billion in 2050.

Saudi Arabia controls nearly 265 billion barrels of proven oil, accounting for nearly 22 per cent of the world's total extractable crude wealth.

Other oil heavyweights include the UAE, with around 98 billion barrels, Kuwait, with 101 billion, Iraq with 115 billion and Iran with over 120 billion barrels.

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01 Winston Smith
30 Dec 2010

At the end of the day, most of the world's oil will be left in the ground. The energy to get any one of those barrels of oil will equal more than one barrels worth of oil. Given the diminishing returns of mature technologies, we're not going to get around that one.

So, we have perhaps 36 years to consider the matter, while prices creep, and sometimes gallop upward, until we're more or less done with oil as a significant player in the energy market.

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