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We are confronting another huge challenge and, like climate change, it has been encroaching for years. In concert with global warming, and in an unholy alliance, comes the decline of oil and gas.

For thousands of years slaves and cheap labour supported civilisation but, following the Industrial Revolution, humanity began to thrive on stored solar energy contained in coal, oil and gas. Used for transport, heat and cold, and materials too, notably concrete, metals, plastics and fertilisers, fossil fuels have increased human capacity a hundred fold and our standard of living, indeed our capacity to stay alive, now depends on them as we burn through 16 billion of tonnes a year, releasing double that weight of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the process.  But, although huge volumes remain in the ground the easy pickings are long gone. The new stuff is deeper in the earth, deeper under water, and in remoter, more formidable environments.

Still, this is not the whole story. This is not where the real challenge lies.

Over the last 50 years, as demand for oil and gas soared and supply routes multiplied, ever more sophisticated equipment was required for extraction, processing and transport all of which needed energy, and lots of it. As a consequence the Energy Return on Investment (EROI); the ratio of the amount of energy delivered from a resource to the amount used to obtain that resource, has fallen precipitously and is still falling.

The EROI, this is the challenge.

Of course there is no doubt, at least for most of us, that burning fossil fuels damages our environment. We face an existential threat to the world’s current climate balance on which 8 billion people relies.  So, while the net energy content from fossil fuels dwindles, we must find new cleaner sources which also require substantial amounts of energy to exploit and other things too such as uranium, graphite and rare metals, for magnets, batteries, and electronics.

Less net energy, scarce materials, resource nationalisation, high costs and inflation. It is a recipe for human hardship and, of course, resource wars. And what are we doing to counteract this perfect storm? In regards to EROI, not much at all.

The energy and transport industries are developing alternatives, experimenting with carbon capture and converting to electrified transport. But some organisations are making things worse, attempting to ‘stop oil’ and damage economies in countries most active in mitigating the problems. A reduction in the financial strength of commercial organisations and governments reduces their capacity to pay for new technology and infrastructure and other strategies to mitigate the effect of a changing climate.

 We should all feel free to persuade (or force) humans to use less energy for leisure activities but careless attempts to cut essential supplies through bans and boycotts can kill people more quickly and efficiently than climate change ever could.  Make no mistake ‘clean’ energy supplies are still insufficient to meet our needs. Only by retaining fossil fuels in controlled decline while expanding renewable and mitigation strategies can human death and destruction be, perhaps, avoided.

Falling EROI is happening. Climate change is happening. But surely we should also work to provide sufficient energy for all our 8 billion people. Like it or not, fossil fuels remain fundamental to the existence of our crowded human world.


Listed here are milestones, achievements (including forecasts) made by the industry whilst exploring for and exploiting oil and gas.

Production and well category records in datafiles for countries, regions and other groups - 1950 to 2050.

FIRSTS AND RECORDS

CATEGORY OIL


Oil (fossil) production (on and offshore)

FIRST ONSHORE PRODUCTION:

1812 France

1854 Poland

1857 Romania

1859 USA

GLOBAL PRODUCTION PASSES:

10 mm bbls/day in 1950 (after 96 years)

30 mm bbls/day in 1965 (after 15 years)

50 mm bbls/day in 1971 (after 6 years)

70 mm bbls/day in 1997 (after 26 years)

90 mm bbls/day in 2015 (after 18 years)

100 mm bbls/day in 2025 (forecast)

FIRST OFFSHORE PRODUCTION:

1925 Azerbaijan

1938 USA

FIRST SYNCRUDE PRODUCTION:

1967 Canada

FIRST PRODUCTION >500m WATER:

1984 USA

1987 Brazil

FIRST PRODUCTION >1000m WATER:

1994 Brazil

1999 USA

FIRST PRODUCTION >2000m WATER:

2000 USA

2010 Brazil

ONSHORE PRODUCTION AT PEAK:

2029 at 71.3 mm bbls/day (forecast)

OFFSHORE PRODUCTION AT PEAK:

2034 at 38 mm bbls/day (forecast)

As collated and forecast by globalshift.co.uk

CATEGORY SALES GAS


Sales gas production (on and offshore)

FIRST ONSHORE PRODUCTION:

1865 USA

1914 Romania

1929 Trinidad

GLOBAL PRODUCTION PASSES:

500 bcm each year in 1962 (after 97 years)

1000 bcm each year in 1970 (after 8 years)

2000 bcm each year in 1991 (after 21 years)

3000 bcm each year in 2008 (after 17 years)

4000 bcm each year in 2022 (forecast)

5000 bcm each year in 2029 (forecast)

FIRST OFFSHORE PRODUCTION:

1945 USA

1963 Japan

SHALE/TIGHT PRODUCTION PASSES:

100 bcm each year in 1996

FIRST PRODUCTION >500m WATER:

1984 USA

1990 Brazil

FIRST PRODUCTION >1000m WATER:

1994 Brazil

1999 USA

FIRST PRODUCTION >2000m WATER:

2000 USA

2011 Brazil

ONSHORE PRODUCTION AT PEAK:

2043 at 3836 bcm in that year (forecast)

OFFSHORE PRODUCTION AT PEAK:

2038 at 2610 bcm in that year (forecast)

As collated and forecast by globalshift.co.uk

CATEGORY DRILLED WELLS


Drilled wells (on and offshore)

ONSHORE (CUMULATIVE) DRILLED WELL NUMBERS PASS:

200,000 in 1934 (after approx. 75 years)

1 mm in 1956 (after 22 years)

2 mm in 1976 (after 20 years)

3 mm in 1988 (after 12 years)

4 mm in 2005 (after 17 years)

5 mm in 2015 (after 10 years)

6 mm in 2030 (forecast, after 15 years)

ONSHORE WELLS DRILLED BY 2050

Cumulative at 7.7 mm (forecast)

ONSHORE WELLS AT A MAXIMUM:

In 1981 at 112,558 wells in that year

FIRST WELL DETACHED FROM LAND:

1891 USA (drilled in a man-made water reservoir at Grand Lake St Mary’s, Ohio)

FIRST WELL IN MARINE WATERS:

1896 USA (drilled in the Pacific from a pier off Summerland, California)

FIRST OFFSHORE (AS DEFINED) WELL:

1925 Azerbaijan

1937 USA

1947 USA (Kermac-16 well drilled by Kerr McGee ‘out of sight of land’, 17 kms from the coast, Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana)

FIRST WELL IN >500m WATER:

1974 Morocco, Mauritania and Gabon

FIRST WELL IN >1000m WATER:

1976 Thailand and the Philippines

FIRST WELL IN >2000m WATER:

1996 USA

1999 Brazil

FIRST WELL IN >3000m WATER:

2013 India

OFFSHORE (CUMULATIVE) DRILLED WELL NUMBERS PASS:

10,000 in 1967 (after 42 years)

50,000 in 1983 (after 16 years)

90,000 in 1997 (after 14 years)

130,000 in 2008 (after 11 years)

170,000 in 2022 (forecast, after 13 years)

OFFSHORE WELLS DRILLED BY 2050

Cumulative at 263,894 (forecast)

OFFSHORE WELLS AT A MAXIMUM:

In 1984 at 3,960 wells in that year

As collated and forecast by globalshift.co.uk

CATEGORY TECHNOLOGY


Development technology (on and offshore)

ONSHORE ACTIVE WELLS PASS:

100,000 in 1933 (after approx. 75 years)

1 mm in 1981 (after 48 years)

1.5 mm in 2008 (after 27 years)

MAX 1.8mm (approx.) in 2014 (after 6 years)

FIRST PLATFORM IN THE SEA:

1938 (Pure Oil’s Creole platform erected 2.5 kms off Cameron, Louisiana)

FIRST SEMISUBMERSIBLE

1962 (Shell’s Blue Water-1 semisub drilled a well in the GOM in 91m of water)

OFFSHORE ACTIVE WELLS PASS:

1,000 in 1958 (after 33 years)

10,000 in 1974 (after 16 years)

40,000 in 2011 (after 38 years)

MAX 62,000 (approx.) in 2043 (forecast)

FIRST MARINE SUBSEA COMPLETION:

1960 Peru

1960 USA

FIRST FPSO:

1975 UK (the Argyll field in the North Sea)

FIRST OFFSHORE HORIZONTAL:

1991 USA

FIRST SUBSEA BOOSTER PUMP:

1994 (ENI’s Prezioso Field, Italy at a water depth of 50m)

FIRST SUBSEA SEPARATION UNIT:

2001 (Statoil’s Troll C, Norway at a water depth of 340m)

As collated and forecast by globalshift.co.uk

CATEGORY RECORDS


Deepest and longest

DEEPEST WATER DEPTH WELLS:

2021 Angola, Ondjaba-1 in 3,628m of water (Lower Congo Basin)

2016 Uruguay, Raya-1 in 3,404m of water (Pelotas Basin)

2013 India, in 3,174m of water (Krishna-Godavari Basin)

DEEPEST SUBSEA TREE:

2009 USA, in 2,934m (GOM, Tobago field)

DEEPEST FLOATING PRODUCTION:

2016 USA, in 2,896m (GOM, Turritella FPSO, Stones field)

LONGEST OIL TIE BACK:

69.8 kms USA, in 175m of water (GOM, Penguin A-E)

DEEPEST WATER PRODUCTION UNIT:

2016 USA, in 2,896m of water (GOM, Stones field)

LONGEST GAS TIE BACK (OFFSHORE):

190 kms Australia, in 806m of water (NW Shelf, Gorgon Field, Chevron)

149 kms Israel, in 1,676m of water (Mediterranean, Tamar Field, Noble)

143 kms Norway, in 345m of water (Barents Sea, Snohvit Field, Statoil)

LONGEST HORIZONTAL WELL:

15,239m UAE (Upper Zakum, 2022)

15,000m Russia (Sakhalin, Chayvo, 2017)

As collated and forecast by globalshift.co.uk
Global Firsts and Records*

*As at 1st January 2022. For individual countries and all other categories, and for full yearly histories and forecasts, you will need the datafiles

Oil Volumes

Gas Volumes

Well Numbers

Reserves/Peaks

Firsts/Records