…The trouble is that the innovations of this century, tight oil and shale gas, have very high rates at which the productivity of their fields decline.
That said, there is a lot to be found and it’s my understanding that AI is helping to offset the declines by improving the hit rate of new wells and how much can be squeezed out of them. (In case you were wondering what the military industrial complex regards as AI’s most important utility!)
Not all oil fields are created equal. It’s my ‘layperson’ understanding that some are not even really oil in the beginning of the 20th century sense.
1. Some only produce ‘light’ products of the kind one gets from the top half of a conventional oil distillation column. Some produce gas and liquids that have to be ‘reformed’ into heavier products (expensive).
https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/111126609525069718
2. And some come from fields with productivity that declines really sharply…
