EDIT
The Energy Watch Group report, “Coal: Resources and Future Production,” notes that about 90% of coal reserves are concentrated in 6 countries: USA, Russia, India, China, Australia and South Africa. The USA alone holds 30% and is the second largest producer. China is by far the largest producer but contains only half of the reserves of the USA. Therefore the development of these two countries is a key for future coal production. However, the report’s authors (Werner Zittel and Jörg Schindler) are of the opinion that “the data quality is very unreliable,” especially for China, South Asia, and the Former Soviet Union countries. Some nations (such as Vietnam) have not updated their “proved reserves” for decades, in some instances not since the 1960s. China’s last update was in 1992; since then, 20 percent of its reserves have been consumed, though this is not revealed in its official figures.
Even more striking is the fact that since 1986 all nations with significant coal resources (excepting India and Australia) that have made the effort to update their reserves estimates have reported substantial downward resource revisions. Some countries—including Botswana, Germany, and the UK—have downgraded their reserves by more than 90 percent. Poland’s reserves are now 50 percent smaller than was the case 20 years ago. Each new assessment (again, except in the cases of India and Australia) has followed the general trend. These downgrades cannot be explained by volumes produced in this period. The best explanation, according to the EWG report’s authors, is that nations now have better data from more thorough surveys. If that is the case, then future downward revisions are likely from countries that continue to rely on decades-old resource estimates. The report concludes: “the present and past experience does not support the common argument that reserves are increasing over time as new areas are explored and prices rise.”
...The EWG report’s authors, taking these factors into account, state: “it is likely that China will experience peak production within the next 5–15 years, followed by a steep decline.” Only if China’s reported coal reserves are in reality much larger than reported will Chinese coal production rates not peak “very soon” and drop rapidly.
... The United States is the world’s second-largest producer, surpassing the two next important producer states (India and Australia) by nearly a factor of three. Its reserves are so large that America has sometimes been called “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” The U.S. has already passed its peak of production for high-quality coal (from the Appalachian mountains and the Illinois basin) and has seen production of bituminous coal decline since 1990. However, growing extraction of sub-bituminous coal in Wyoming has more than compensated for this. Taking reserves into account, the authors of the report conclude that growth in total volumes can continue for 10 to 15 years. However, in terms of energy content U.S. coal production peaked in 1998 at 598 million tons of oil equivalents (Mtoe); by 2005 this had fallen to 576 Mtoe.
EDIT
http://www.energybulletin.net/27524.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
