Brazil: Reserves and Production

Guest Post by George Kaplan

Brazil is a major oil producing country, but in 2016 was still a net importer, though imports dropped significantly and they have been a slight exporter overall so far this year. It is one of the few countries that have consistently grown production over recent years, and possibly the only non-OPEC country that will show overall growth of conventional crude in the ten years to (say) 2022.

Production

Brazil ANP or anp (Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis) publishes Excel files for monthly production on all wells. In theory it should be easy to extract field data from these, in practice not so much. The files are downloaded from a database but not always consistently, sometimes in field units sometimes SI, sometimes one month per file sometimes more, around 2010 onshore and offshore was split but naming conventions weren’t always followed, handling of wildcat wells seems a bit arbitrary, and spelling conventions can change. However after more effort than I expected I did download the data and split it by basin and field.

The total production fits Jodi data well except for three periods: 2005 when the reports stated, and doesn’t make much difference; 2010 when ANP split offshore and onshore reporting and the well files are a complete mess; and 2017, which may indicate that some of the data is revised (this should become evident as more releases are made over the next months).

chart/

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OPEC June Production Data

All data below is based on the latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report.

All data is through June 2017 and is in thousand barrels per day.

The above chart does not include the 14th member of OPEC that was just added, Equatorial Guinea. I do not have historical data for Equatorial Guinea so I may not add them at all. It doesn’t really matter since they are only a very minor producer. Also, they are in steep decline, dropping at about 10% per year.

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Africa In Peril

This is a special post by Ron Patterson. Please limit all comments to the subject matter of this post.

Era of ‘Biological Annihilation’ Is Underway, Scientists Warn

From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass extinction is underway, new research finds.

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls the current decline in animal populations a “global epidemic” and part of the “ongoing sixth mass extinction” caused in large measure by human destruction of animal habitats. The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena.

The wildlife decline in most of the world is terrible, but in Africa it is catastrophic. By 2100 there will be no megafauna whatsoever in Africa. All elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses, lions, gorillas, chimpanzees, and even zebras and wildebeest will be totally extinct. And the culprit in this huge animal extinction is Africa’s massive overpopulation problem. It is terrible today but is about to get a whole lot worse.

The population of Africa, in 2016, was 1.22 billion. The UN estimates that in 2100 the population of Africa will be about 4.45 billion. Notice that is an increase of about 300 million from their estimate just five years ago. But their 2100 population estimate has doubled since theit 1998 estimate.

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