PMID- 26695068
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20160629
LR  - 20181113
IS  - 1932-6203 (Electronic)
IS  - 1932-6203 (Linking)
VI  - 10
IP  - 12
DP  - 2015
TI  - Energy Return on Investment (EROI) for Forty Global Oilfields Using a Detailed 
      Engineering-Based Model of Oil Production.
PG  - e0144141
LID - 10.1371/journal.pone.0144141 [doi]
LID - e0144141
AB  - Studies of the energy return on investment (EROI) for oil production generally 
      rely on aggregated statistics for large regions or countries. In order to better 
      understand the drivers of the energy productivity of oil production, we use a 
      novel approach that applies a detailed field-level engineering model of oil and 
      gas production to estimate energy requirements of drilling, producing, 
      processing, and transporting crude oil. We examine 40 global oilfields, utilizing 
      detailed data for each field from hundreds of technical and scientific data 
      sources. Resulting net energy return (NER) ratios for studied oil fields range 
      from  approximately 2 to  approximately 100 MJ crude oil produced per MJ of total fuels consumed. External 
      energy return (EER) ratios, which compare energy produced to energy consumed from 
      external sources, exceed 1000:1 for fields that are largely self-sufficient. The 
      lowest energy returns are found to come from thermally-enhanced oil recovery 
      technologies. Results are generally insensitive to reasonable ranges of 
      assumptions explored in sensitivity analysis. Fields with very large associated 
      gas production are sensitive to assumptions about surface fluids processing due 
      to the shifts in energy consumed under different gas treatment configurations. 
      This model does not currently include energy invested in building oilfield 
      capital equipment (e.g., drilling rigs), nor does it include other indirect 
      energy uses such as labor or services.
FAU - Brandt, Adam R
AU  - Brandt AR
AD  - Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford University, 367 Panama St., 
      Stanford, CA 94035, United States of America.
FAU - Sun, Yuchi
AU  - Sun Y
AD  - Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford University, 367 Panama St., 
      Stanford, CA 94035, United States of America.
FAU - Bharadwaj, Sharad
AU  - Bharadwaj S
AD  - Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford University, 367 Panama St., 
      Stanford, CA 94035, United States of America.
FAU - Livingston, David
AU  - Livingston D
AD  - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW, 
      Washington, DC 20036, United States of America.
FAU - Tan, Eugene
AU  - Tan E
AD  - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW, 
      Washington, DC 20036, United States of America.
FAU - Gordon, Deborah
AU  - Gordon D
AD  - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW, 
      Washington, DC 20036, United States of America.
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
DEP - 20151222
PL  - United States
TA  - PLoS One
JT  - PloS one
JID - 101285081
RN  - 0 (Petroleum)
SB  - IM
MH  - *Energy-Generating Resources
MH  - Engineering
MH  - Investments
MH  - Models, Theoretical
MH  - Oil and Gas Fields
MH  - *Petroleum
PMC - PMC4687841
COIS- Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
EDAT- 2015/12/24 06:00
MHDA- 2016/06/30 06:00
PMCR- 2015/12/22
CRDT- 2015/12/24 06:00
PHST- 2015/05/25 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2015/10/21 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2015/12/24 06:00 [entrez]
PHST- 2015/12/24 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2016/06/30 06:00 [medline]
PHST- 2015/12/22 00:00 [pmc-release]
AID - PONE-D-15-22704 [pii]
AID - 10.1371/journal.pone.0144141 [doi]
PST - epublish
SO  - PLoS One. 2015 Dec 22;10(12):e0144141. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0144141. 
      eCollection 2015.