A dynamic model for liquid fossil fuel production based on gross product/ERoEI coupling

Aymeric Lamorlette

Energy, 2022, vol. 260, issue C

Abstract: Since 1940, many attempts to model oil production have been proposed. These approaches, using increasing complexity, consider growing and decay of production independently of external, time-varying, causes. It is here proposed to extend the production equation by a dynamic dependency between oil and Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI). The model is based on mass and energy conservation and can be applied to all extracted liquid fossil fuels. After comparison with oil extraction and ERoEI dynamics, it highlights the existence of an external, controlling parameter: the investment rate, which account for the re-investment in newly operated liquid fuel sources. Its dynamic provides explanations about the oil shock and some explanations about the peak prediction issues of the Hubbert model. Studying this evolution suggests an attempt to control the oil production in order to sustain a globally linear production, starting around 1943: at short time scale (shorter than 28–36 years), the investment rate evolved linearly. However, in order to keep a linearly growing production at long time scale, the investment rate had to evolve exponentially: this was achieved through a piecewize linear control, where the investment rate and its derivative doubled every 28–36 years. The link between this control and the oil shocks suggests the next oil shock will occur around 2035–2040.

Keywords: Oil production; ERoEI; dynamic model; investment rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544222015961
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:260:y:2022:i:c:s0360544222015961

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2022.124693

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().