For generations, we've taken it for granted. But as prices soar and reserves dwindle, the time is fast approaching when mankind will have to live without oil. Are we ready to confront some really inconvenient truths? Michael Savage reports from the North Sea
Source: The Independent Authors: Michael Savage Dated: 2008-06-12
Aberdeen heliport is heaving. Dozens of rig men are waiting to board helicopters and begin a two-week stint in the middle of the North Sea. It appears that business out on the rigs, known simply as "the job" in these parts, is booming. Eventually, it's our turn to board a cramped chopper, shoulder to shoulder with the solidly built workers who sit silently, psyching themselves up for a fortnight surrounded by cold, crashing waves.
Two hours later, we land at a rusting rig named Alwyn, 440 kilometres off the coast of Aberdeen. Ollie Bradshaw, the rig's burly production supervisor, meets the new arrivals.
"What's life like offshore? Busy. Very busy," he says. He's not joking. As we traipse around the rig's two platforms, perched 200 feet above the (thankfully) calm waters of the North Sea, we navigate between the numerous piles of scaffolding, timber and new equipment that take up almost every last square inch of space. The on-board population has swollen to 250 people lately. In some cases, three men are having to share a room, while new digs are built next to the rig's busy helipad, where several flights land and take off each day, delivering a conveyer belt of fresh workers – from painters and decorators to extra scaffolders and, of course, the men whose expertise lies in harvesting fossil fuels from beneath the sea bed.
Even in the common room, no one is standing idle – not around the television, nor the snooker table. The on-board gym is empty. In the canteen, a few men grab bacon rolls before heading off to start their 4pm shift. Those on an earlier shift have just had their lunch – there's been a run on lemon tart. Yet the hive of activity that Alwyn has become of late is not down to all the oil it is producing. Far from it.
"Alwyn started out as an oil well and platform more than two decades ago. As oil production has fallen, it has been adapted and changed," says Bradshaw, a man who seems devoted to his life here in the middle of nowhere. The rig's expanding team is having to work harder than ever to keep it going. A vast network of underground pipes has linked it to new pockets of oil and gas – some of the neighbouring platforms seem like they are just touching distance away. New techniques have been used to boost the quality of the last dregs of oil coming out of the ground. Empty reservoirs are being drained of natural gas. Now, a major discovery of a field of natural gas has meant that, after 21 years of work, Alwyn's creaking infrastructure is being given a facelift to keep going for another 20 years. But it will also mean its conversion from the oil platform it once was will be complete.
The end of Alwyn's oil well days is a familiar story in the North Sea. The rig men may be working as hard as ever, but UK oil production has been falling rapidly ever since 1999. In the past, that hasn't been such a problem – other producers around the world have always been able to produce more of the black stuff to keep the wheels of world industry lubricated. But according to some, that may be about to change. Oil prices are so high – $137 a barrel – and predicted by Alexey Miller, head of Gazprom, the Russian state energy giant, to rise as high as $250 a barrel – that social tensions have begun to emerge, while the world's leaders have been going cap in hand to oil producers, asking them to squeeze a few more barrels out of their wells. And as prices have kept on breaking records, an ever-growing worry looms in the background, the elephant in the room of the oil price rise: what if they can't produce any more? What if, this time, the oil taps really are running dry?
Worryingly, for a world reliant on the dirt-cheap energy that oil provided throughout the last century, the idea that oil production in all nations may soon start to decline just as in the North Sea has been seeping into the mainstream. The "peak oil" theory – that oil production has reached its maximum and will soon begin its decline, bringing potentially catastrophic consequences to the modern world – no longer just comes from internet crackpots and conspiracy theorists; now geologists, market analysts and oil prospectors believe that this scenario is becoming reality. And within the past year, there have been signs that the major oil companies are admitting this themselves. If they are right, high petrol prices could be the least of the world's problems.
The idea is simple enough. Those warning against an imminent peak oil crisis – the "peakists" – say that while the world will not totally run out of oil, all of the oil that is easy to reach has been all but used up, meaning that producing enough oil to meet the growing world demand is becoming an ever harder task. Worse, we now stand at the high water mark of oil production. That means that not only will we never be able to produce much more oil than the 87 million barrels a day we now consume, but world oil production will actually begin to fall very soon, causing not only ever higher prices, but also creating the prospect of shortages, industrial upheaval, battles over ever-depleting resources, and even an end to the modern world built upon the assumption of a plentiful supply of cheap oil.
"A lot of people keep talking about 'this peak oil theory' – but there's nothing theoretical about it. It's just a very obvious fact of nature," says Colin Campbell, a geologist who searched for oil on behalf of several oil companies, and is the high priest of the peakists. "Oil is formed in the geological past. That means it's a finite resource. That means production begins and ends, and passes a peak in between. So the fact that there is a peak is beyond dispute. We've had the first half of the age of oil, which has changed the world in every conceivable way. We now face a decline."
Campbell is in no doubt that the world's oil production is as high as it is ever going to get. "The result of the latest update I made using industry data was that the regular, conventional oil peaked in 2005 and if you put all the other types in – the heavy oils, the gas liquids, the Arctic oil, the deep water projects – I have it this year," he says, in a softly spoken, matter-of-fact tone. "That's not cast in stone. It could slip a year or two. But I'm absolutely confident that it's in the right area."
Whereas Campbell's fears once branded him a wacky radical, as the years have gone by he has been joined by a growing band of industry experts who have reached a similarly grim conclusion. One of those was an American investment banker examining "flow rates" – the speed at which oil was being taken out of the ground. After being asked to advise Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush on energy policy during the 2000 election campaign, Matthew Simmons found that more and more oil fields had begun to decline. That was because, though new technology was helping to extract oil faster than ever before, it was also causing the fields to run dry more quickly, too. "All of a sudden there were fields that were declining by as much as 30 per cent per year," he says. "But I didn't call it 'peak oil' – I didn't even know what that was back then."
Simmons came across peak oil in 2002, when he attended the first meeting of a new group founded by Colin Campbell. Only around 45 people showed up to the first meeting of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (Aspo), but since then, its findings have convinced a lot more people around the world. Aspo now has branches in 36 countries, with Kuwait the latest wanting to found one. And some serious analysts have also made the mental journey from dissenters to peak-oil prophets.
"I've been on that journey," says Chris Skrebowski, who spent half his career in the oil industry and now edits the UK oil industry's publication of record, Petroleum Review. He admits to having been dismissive of the idea that the world's wells were running dry. It was a visit from Campbell in 1996 that made him change his mind. "I didn't quite believe him, but I didn't think he was the average nutter," he says. Skrebowski began to take a look at the issue himself. The numbers told a clear story. "You can just about struggle through to 2011, if everything goes to plan – which, of course, it won't – but after that, the numbers don't add up. And that's taking a reasonably conservative rate of decline. If you wind it up to a 5 or 6 per cent annual decline, then you are at this peak or plateau now."
One man who believes that could be the real rate of decline is the archetypal US oilman, T Boone Pickens, otherwise known as the "Oracle of Oil". Having made a fortune in the oil industry, Pickens now invests heavily in the oil alternatives he believes will be necessary to fill the gap left by falling oil production.
From the window of helicopter, flying above the uninviting waves of the North Sea, it seems hard to believe that the world could really be running low on easy oil. Dozens of rigs pepper the vast expanse of water, their burning flares making them look like floating candles. Spiralling wisps of smoke fill the North Sea sky – a reminder that there is still oil churning around. Despite the pedigree of the peakists, it's hard not to think we've heard it all before, that it's just the usual doomsayers predicting that the oilfields would run out, and that more will be found somewhere. But for the peakists, the North Sea is a great case study. Its rapid decline has come despite all the advantages the modern world could throw at it.
"The North Sea has the benefit of all the investment anybody could need," says Campbell. "It's got the most modern technology, and it's got a political environment that's stable. There's no reason why it would be producing less oil than is possible, yet it has been declining at a rate of 7 per cent a year." Perhaps even more worryingly, the last year has seen major oil companies begin to make more noises about potential problems ahead. Foremost among them has been head of the French oil company Total, Christophe de Margerie, who has declared that world production will never exceed 100 billion barrels a day, a level of demand expected in less than a decade. "The oil companies are changing their tune," says Campbell. "They can't quite say 'peak' in so many words. They don't want to rock the boat."
Back on dry land, in a seafood restaurant in Aberdeen, a senior oil executive talks freely about a future. "We can try to slow the decline, but we will never stop it," he says casually, over a plate of scallops. "All we can do is get as much oil out of the ground as possible." Meanwhile, Colin Campbell is flirting with official approval. He is already advising a Norwegian oil firm, and has recently been invited to give informal presentations to executives from two of the world's biggest oil companies. A clear momentum has been built up around peak oil fears. For Simmons, it is the peak oil deniers that are now the ones sounding shrill. "I daily read these shrill sounding experts who still believe that oil should be at $40 a barrel," he says. "It's just unbelievable. It's still cheap."
Not everyone is convinced by the peak oil theory, though. This week, The Independent reported that, according to Richard Pike, a former oil industry man, now chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, there is more than twice as much oil in the ground than producers claim. But the most notable peak oil refusnik is the International Energy Agency (IEA), the oil supply watchdog set up by the world's richest nations. It has said that not only is the world not running out of oil, but that production will continue to match the 135 million barrels a day that is forecast to be needed by 2050. It says that while conventional sources of oil may only provide around 92 million barrels a day of that, investment in Saudi Arabia's fields and the growth of new sources of oil will provide the rest.
To the peakists, these standard oil industry ripostes are starting to wear a little thin, and have been damaged by the crashing and burning of some great white hopes. Not a single barrel of commercially viable shale oil, made from oil-rich sedimentary rock, has yet been produced. Oil made from tar sands found in northern Canada is near the top of the list of innovative sources of oil, but even the oil companies themselves admit that the amount of energy currently needed to produce a single barrel of it makes it very inefficient. And while drilling into ever-deeper waters might keep world production on its current plateau, the peakists say the days of "easy oil" are over.
As for the comforting idea that Saudi Arabia could simply turn up its taps and produce far more oil if it felt like it – the preferred belief of President Bush and Gordon Brown – the peakists have some pretty big problems with that, too. "The one thing that made peak oil a bogus issue was the supposedly proven fact that in the Middle East, we had 200 years of oil supply," says Simmons. "Because of that, we obviously couldn't have peaked. I'd just assumed it had to be true. Then I started doing my research." After poring over more than 200 technical papers, he made the grim conclusion that, just like elsewhere, production in Saudi Arabia was either at or very near its peak.
And even the conservative estimates of the IEA have not been unaffected by the spectre of peak oil. It has decided to review how it sources its data on oil reserves, which is widely expected to lead to a lowering of its predictions of future oil supplies when it publishes its overview of the industry in November. If it, too, reveals that the days of free flowing oil could be over, the halls of power might begin to take notice.
None of this will make any difference to life on the Alwyn rig in the near future. For the next 20 years, it will be producing natural gas, and making low-grade oil from some of it. "We'll be here until every last drop of oil is out of the ground," Ollie Bradshaw reassures me.
But unlike Alwyn, more rigs will be decommissioned than refurbished if the peak oil theorists turn out to be right – and they warn that the effects on the world could be dramatic.
A world without plentiful oil, as described by the peakists, looks very different from today's. The peakists are in no doubt about the aspect of modern living that would have to change. With transport soaking up the vast majority of the world's oil, they maintain that our addiction to the car will have to go. According to Chris Skrebowski, large-scale electrification will be needed in all vehicles, perhaps with pylons placed down motorways to provide power. Diesel-powered public transport needs to be replaced with electric trains, trams, and trolley buses. That would create breathing space to make more profound societal changes, such as a growth of working from home. Matthew Simmons also sees the current global economy soon becoming unsustainable. "Local farms are now coming back," he says. "We have all the technology in place to do that."
That's just for starters. According to Campbell, a wholesale change in the western lifestyle will be needed a little further down the road. "Cities will face massive challenges," he says. "By the end of the century, when there really isn't very much oil left, the world will be a very different one – much more rural, probably with fewer people. It's a sort of doomsday message, but in some ways, it's just a change from the modern mindset. There are people in the world who live a simple life like that and are very happy." But that's nothing compared with what could happen if we attempt to carry on regardless with ever-growing oil consumption. "If we don't make changes, we're going to have a resource war and blow ourselves up," says Simmons. "I think that would be a really inconvenient way to end the world."
So will the end of the oil age herald in a new dark age? Are we doomed to go back to sheltering in mud huts and living off a diet of turnips and water? Not necessarily. Thankfully, other peakists are optimistic that we can cope with a world without such vast quantities of cheap oil – if we act now. "Humanity is very ingenious," says Skrebowski. "But at the moment, it doesn't yet see a crisis. We're just acting like a spoilt child who has had its lollipop taken away. At some point, some politician has got to come out and state clearly that the world is going to be different. It's not the end of the world, but we're all going to have to change the way we do things. And the sooner we get on with it, the better. The anticipation is probably worse than the reality."
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Limping on Empty
« Reply #1 on: 2008-07-02 19:25:30 »
Well this looks like maybe someone is reading the tea leaves correctly. This seems at least to provide a glimmer of hope. But 'Haliburtanites' are I'm sure already going about trying to pre-dooming the project.
And if memory serves a 'Hermitical' prognostication on how it ought to be done is echoed in the article.
Kakuda, japan—In a recent spin-off of the classic Japanese animated series Mobile Suit Gundam, the depletion of fossil fuels has forced humanity to turn to space-based solar power generation as global conflicts rage over energy shortages. The sci-fi saga is set in the year 2307, but even now real Japanese scientists are working on the hardware needed to realize orbital generators as a form of clean, renewable energy, with plans to complete a prototype in about 20 years. The concept of solar panels beaming down energy from space has long been pondered—and long been dismissed as too costly and impractical. But in Japan the seemingly far-fetched scheme has received renewed attention amid the current global energy crisis and concerns about the environment. Last year researchers at the Institute for Laser Technology in Osaka produced up to 180 watts of laser power from sunlight. In February scientists in Hokkaido began ground tests of a power transmission system designed to send energy in microwave form to Earth. The laser and microwave research projects are two halves of a bold plan for a space solar power system (SSPS) under the aegis of Japan’s space agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Specifically, by 2030 the agency aims to put into geostationary orbit a solar-power generator that will transmit one gigawatt of energy to Earth, equivalent to the output of a large nuclear power plant. The energy would be sent to the surface in microwave or laser form, where it would be converted into electricity for commercial power grids or stored in the form of hydrogen. “We’re doing this research for commonsense reasons—as a potential solution to the challenges posed by the exhaustion of fossil fuels and global warming,” says Hiroaki Suzuki of JAXA’s Advanced Mission Research Center, one of about 180 scientists at major Japanese research institutes working on the scheme. JAXA says its potential advantages are straightforward: in space, solar irradiance is five to 10 times as strong as on the ground, so generation is more efficient; solar energy could be collected 24 hours a day; and weather would not pose a problem. The system would also be clean, generating no pollution or waste, and safe. The intensity of energy reaching Earth’s surface might be about five kilowatts per square meter—about five times that of the sun at noon on a clear summer day at midlatitudes. Although the scientists say this amount will not harm the human body, the receiving area would nonetheless be cordoned off and situated at sea. At a facility in Miyagi, Suzuki and JAXA researchers are testing an 800-watt optical-fiber laser that fires at a receiving station 500 meters away. A mirror reflecting only 1,064-nanometer-wavelength light directs it into an experimental solar panel. (He chose that frequency of light because it easily cuts through Earth’s atmosphere, losing no more than 10 percent of its pop.) A key task will be finding a material that can convert sunlight into laser light efficiently. A leading candidate is an yttrium-aluminum-garnet ceramic material containing neodymium and chromium. The basic science is only part of the challenge. Testing both the microwave and laser systems will require gargantuan structures in space: thin-film condenser mirrors, solar panels and a microwave transmitter stretching for kilometers and weighing 10,000 metric tons, as well as a 100-unit laser array of 5,000 metric tons that would be 10 kilometers long. The ground-based microwave antenna would have to be two kilometers long. The total project cost would be enormous—perhaps in the tens of billions of dollars—but Suzuki and his colleagues say they are not considering the price tag. “We can’t know whether this is feasible or not if we don’t have the basic technology first,” he says. “We’re aiming to produce stable, cheap power and hydrogen at a target price of 6.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.” That would be in line with conventional power generation costs of today and might make it more economically attractive. Given current technology, transporting large-scale structures into space may be feasible only through the cooperation of space agencies on different continents. Suzuki, though, says countries in the space race are trying to develop their technologies independently while the potential militarization of space grows. “If JAXA, NASA and the European Space Agency can work together, it would be best,” he adds. It all sounds like the prelude to a sci-fi saga. Note: This story was originally published with the title, "Roping the Sun".
Re:Limping on Empty
« Reply #2 on: 2008-07-02 21:38:57 »
I fear they are likely leaving it too late. Current space access is massively dependent on cheap fuel. My reading is that if we don't have a space elevator by 2025, we likely will lose access to space before implementing space-based solar, even if we have, by some almost unimaginable fortune, avoided a global resource based war before then.
No access to space solar will, of course, almost certainly end any hope of a significant future for mankind. What would be stupid is that I think that it is still possible, just, to achieve both elevator and space solar in this time scale - if we stop wasting effort on other things which means recognizing priorities including the need to prevent wars and the immense waste they entail.
Unfortunately this hasn't happened in the past and I see little reason to hope that it will improve in the future.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Limping on Empty
« Reply #6 on: 2008-07-11 16:01:32 »
You didn't already know that Faux News was all wet?
Kind Regards
Hermit
PS But stop the presses, due to the toxic combination of aquifer depletion and source pollution, the US west of the Mississippi is heading into an irremediable drought which will lead it to having to choose between cities and agriculture within the next few years (think 2012 to 2015 for most of the Western USA). According to the "wisdom" shown here, we can add "fuel" (haha) to that already stochastic mix in order to get to choose between tap-water and transport. I'm not sure that The Onion is left with a future in a world where supposedly serious news outlets can achieve all that parody of them could ever hope to do.
Perhaps we could start a write in campaign to suggest a new tagline to Murdoch & Co., "Faux News, all the auto-parody that a strong stomach can stand - and more."
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Limping on Empty
« Reply #7 on: 2008-07-14 21:29:55 »
Quote:
[Hermit]<snip>we can add "fuel" (haha) to that already stochastic mix in order to get to choose between tap-water and transport.<snip>
[Fritz]With that sad reality in mind, the thought that occurs to me is how long before the great lakes are sacrificed for greater expedience - more then they already have been that is ... and what if the crazy Canuks suggest not ?
Quote:
[Hermit]<snip>Perhaps we could start a write in campaign to suggest a new tagline to Murdoch & Co., "Faux News, all the auto-parody that a strong stomach can stand - and more."<snip>
[Fritz]The eternal belief that 'Gizmos' and 'K-Tel' will save us, is alive and well in the western Psyche. And "Never point a pun at a friend, it could be loaded" .... I enjoyed the nice word plays in your reply.
Re:Limping on Empty
« Reply #8 on: 2008-08-05 21:50:24 »
Looks like corn is out and algae is in; lets bent mother nature over yet again and then run her up the flag pole of endless hope.
Sigh
Fritz
Could algae be the next alternative fuel? Source: Pilot Tribune Date: July 24, 2008
You know that greenish tinge in parts of the lake this season? The same one that shows up in the swimming pool when you run out of chlorine - or in our fish tank if the filter shuts down?
What if you could use that to run your car? [Fritz]Its going to be good I just know it
Some researchers believe that's possible. And the state is considering a proposal from Maharishi University of Management to create an algae bioreactor. It's a fancy name for a concept that is really quite simple, and it has several potential advantages. Algae use photosynthesis to live. That's the same basic process as other plants like trees and grass. The key is chlorophyll, a green pigment that drives the reaction. Photosynthesis uses light to produce energy for the plant and also strips carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Oxygen is a byproduct. An algae farm uses photosynthesis to scrub the atmosphere. Algae grows fast, so projects based on it can expand rapidly. And there are some industrial applications already being tested. Some power plants are using algae farms to strip out emissions, since the hot, carbon dioxide-laden gases are a banquet for the tiny plants. Other scientists are looking at using algae as a food supply in areas that crops won't easily grow. But none of this, including your cloudy fish tank, is producing oil. What's missing? MUM Professor Lonnie Gamble says he has the answer. It's not about what the algae produce; it's about what the algae is. "It turns out that the bodies of algae are about 50 percent oil. We can make fuel from them," he said. It's possible to refine the oil into biofuel that can then power vehicles. The Iowa MUM project is partnering with Valcent, a Texas-based company, to examine the potential for beginning a university bioreactor to produce and refine the algae. The current efforts are laboratory scale. The university wants to expand that to a quarter-acre greenhouse for the algae as a test site. Researchers believe industrial scale production will require sites of at least 100 acres. Assistant Professor Jimmy Sinton directs the bioreactor project. He said the key for future use of algae is that the plant is not difficult to grow, nor is it difficult to understand. The Iowa Power Fund will give money to the project, though it's not yet clear how much. The original request was $2 million, but negotiations have not set the final amount. The question is whether the process is in itself fuel efficient. There's no net benefit if it takes more power to produce the algae biofuel than you get in return. The good news is that it doesn't take much to grow the algae. Some algae farms use gas vented from smokestacks as food for the algae. Sinton is not planning to use that process for his algae. Geothermal heat and passive sunlight are enough, particularly on the small scale currently being planned. Algae farmers don't need much space, either. Rooftop farms are possible, and urban production is viable in the long term. Both Gamble and Sinton say the process is close to carbon neutral. That means it produces as much carbon as a fuel as it removes while it grows. It's a trade-off. But expanded use of the algae can make it carbon negative. Sinton pointed to algae as a building material as an example of how producers can sequester carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere on a long-term basis. Money is a driving factor for the research. The process works. But the money-saving advances haven't come in yet. Sinton's current estimates are that setup will cost $300,000 per acre. That number will fall as researchers learn how best to use materials. That's a lot, but the payoffs are big as well. Sinton put production at 30,000 gallons per acre per year at the trial stage. Full-scale production could produce as much as 600,000 gallons per acre per year. As with everything, research should find ways to lower the production costs and raise profits. "We're focused particularly on how to produce cost-effective biodiesel," Sinton said. "The answers are all there. Nobody's put them all together."
Re:Limping on Empty
« Reply #9 on: 2008-11-22 15:30:00 »
This is getting stranger and I may have to fall back on the 'Reptilian Overlord' theory again .... Note, low Dopamine level acknowledged.
Cheers
Fritz
Source: Reuters Author: David Sheppard Date: 2008.11.21
LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. crude oil futures for delivery in January 2014 are trading at a record $30 premium to current contracts, as investors bet that the long-term trend toward higher prices will remain intact despite oil's slump to $50 a barrel.
U.S. crude oil futures -- the global benchmark for oil prices -- have collapsed by almost $100 a barrel since hitting an all time high above $147 a barrel in July. On Friday, U.S. crude for delivery in January 2009 sank to as low as $48.50 a barrel, the weakest price since May 2005.
But oil contracts for delivery in five years time have held stubbornly above $80 a barrel, with the January 2014 contract currently sitting at $81.26 a barrel.
Long-dated oil future contracts are seen as a gauge of how expensive the market thinks oil will be in five years time, and many investors believe that as the global economy recovers from its current malaise, crude prices will soar once again.
"There's not a lot of demand out there at the moment, but you've got to hope the economic situation will be very different by 2014," said Sucden trader Rob Montefusco.
"Oil's spike to almost $150 a barrel was based in large part on tight supplies and growing expectations for demand from China and India. That's still going to come, and now there's even less investment in future oil production due to the double whammy of weaker prices and the credit crunch, supplies could be even tighter in the coming years."[Fritz]Geeze we know how to dig a deep hole
Historically, the correlation between the current oil price and the five-year price has been much closer. From May 2005 until July of this year, the difference between the two contracts was never more than $10 a barrel, and averaged around $6 a barrel.
Analysts said that long-dated contracts were also reflecting the marginal cost of production -- or the price of getting a barrel of oil out of the ground from complex projects such as deep water wells off the coast of Brazil or Canadian oil sand projects.
A larger proportion of the world's oil supplies are expected to come from more expensive projects in the coming years, with much of the easily accessible oil with lower production costs already exploited.
(Reporting by David Sheppard; Editing by James Jukwey)
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