Reserves and resources
This session deals with reserves and resources, which are some of the basic data of the global geopolitics of energy, including oil, as they determine in large part the policies of exporting and importing countries, and the relationship between these two groups in the long-term.
Course reference:
- Chapter 6
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(Session realized on 05/18/13 by May and Renaud Gicquel)Reserves and resources
- proven reserves
- resources that are both identified and can be produced in the technical and economic conditions of the time
- resources
- quantities which are believed to exist and could be discovered one day
Oil and natural gas reserves
McKelvey diagram
Oil proven reserves
Natural gas proven reserves
Coal proven reserves
- three qualities
- coal
- sub-bituminous coal
- lignite
- proven reserves
- 861 Gt in 2011 (440 Gtoe)
- 29% in the United States, 19% in the Russian Federation, 14% in China, 9% in Australia, 5% in Europe
Uranium reserves
- quantities
- about 3.3 Mt at a cost of less than 130 $/t
- 48 Gtep (current nuclear reactors) or nearly 80 years of power generation
- world distribution
- Australia (23%), Kazakhstan (15%), North America (14%) and Africa (21%)
Resources of liquid fuels
Resources of gaseous fuels
Energy resources
Reserves and resources
This session explained the differences between the concepts of reserves and resources, and also provided the values of recent estimates of these quantities for the main sources of energy.