Below is an email sent by Professor Charles Hall from SUNY-Syracuse detailing his recent trip to an international Geology conference in Norway. Though written for his friends and colleagues, I thought the details and insights he shared from his trip to Norway would be worth sharing with the TOD readership, particularly the comments on peak oil and climate change. Charlie also tells me he has a new paper published next week on EROI economics which I will format and post here.

Jean Laherrère kindly agreed to give an interview to TOD:E by e-mail. For several years he was virtually the sole researcher modelling Coal depletion in the same vein it is done for Oil and Gas. Despite being considerably different from the common sense of limitless Coal, his forecasts were this year confirmed by several studies and reports. TOD:E got some comments on this matter as so on the general Fossil Fuels depletion picture and our future beyond them.

This post is the second part in a three piece series about the phenomenon of reserve growth in already found oil fields. Insight in future reserve growth, which is often attributed to advancement in technology, is crucial in determining the peak of conventional oil production. For those not familiar with reserve growth it would be best to read part 1 first:

1. General introduction to reserve growth, what can we learn from the worldwide recovery factor of conventional oil fields?

In this second part various scientific studies about reserve growth in the United States, the North Sea and Russia are analysed. The third part will look at the reliability of the estimate from the United States Geological Survey in their World Petroleum Assessment 2000 with respect to future reserve growth.