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Million barrels of oil.
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∙ 11y ago
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How long does it take extracted 10 million barrels of oil?
This is a simple question, and unfortunately, there is no simple answer. The problem is there is no average oil rate from a well. Oil forcasting is done by developing a production profile, or how much oil per year will the field produce. If a field is forecasted to produce 10,000 bbl/day and decline 10% per year, the production profile would be: Year 1: 10,000 bbl/d 3.7 MMBO = first year production Tear 2: 9,000 bbl/d 3.3 MMBO = second year Year 3 8,100 bbl/d 2.9 MMBO = third year So in the above case, 10 million bbls (10 MMBO) were produced in 3 years. This is possible in a high permeable field that contains a large volume of oil initially, perhaps 100 million bbls. Now, suppose our field's initial rate is 1500 bbl/day and declines 10% per year. In 100 years, it will only produce 6 million bbls, but the rates will be very low (less than 1 bbl/day). The field might be shut-in when it is uneconomical to produce, perhaps in 30 - 70 years. So, my answer is to produce 10 million bbls could take anywhere from 1 year to 100 years, or may never be produced from a field, depending on conditions.
How does the amount of oil being lost in the Gulf compare to the oil lost by the wartime sinking of oil tankers in the Atlantic during World War II?
I did not find an authorative estimate on World War 2 sinkings. There were Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico sinkings by U-boats. Working with the 590,000 tonnes, and using the approximate conversion factor of 7.33 barrel/tonne, we have 4.3 million barrels (MMBO). This is very approximate. Now, the BP spill is ongoing as of June 16, so the final numbers of spilled oil are not available. There has been an improved estimate of 35- 60 MB/D, so if the spill lasts 100 days, this would be 3.5 to 6.0 MMBO. Now, a weakness in these calculations is that there would be no effort to capture spilled oil during WW 2, while substantial volumes are being captured during the BP Spill. Also, the question of the spill rate is still being analyzed by the Task Force. As far as I know, there has been no technical report issued to back up estimated flow rates. We know that the flow rate after the cutting of the riser pipe has to be above 15 MB/D as this is the rate measured coming out of the LMRP. See links.
