title: Decline and depletion rates of oil production: a comprehensive investigation.
abstract: Two of the most fundamental concepts in the current debate about future oil supply are oilfield decline rates and depletion rates. These concepts are related, but not identical. This paper clarifies the definitions of these concepts, summarizes the underlying theory and empirically estimates decline and depletion rates for different categories of oilfield. A database of 880 post-peak fields is analysed to determine typical depletion levels, depletion rates and decline rates. This demonstrates that the size of oilfields has a significant influence on decline and depletion rates, with generally high values for small fields and comparatively low values for larger fields. These empirical findings have important implications for oil supply forecasting.
authors.affiliation: Global Energy Systems, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, , Villavägen 16, Uppsala 752 36, Sweden.
authors.forename: Mikael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Höök
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Davidsson
authors.forename: Sheshti
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Johansson
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tang
keywords: decline rate; depletion level; depletion rate; field-by-field analysis; peak oil