Ron Patterson – Page 72 – Peak Oil Barrel

Can we depend on a “Call on OPEC”, or has OPEC peaked?

03/05/201403/05/2014 Ron Patterson 278 Comments

Steve Kopits, in his recent presentation at Columbia University, ridiculed the IEA’s often used term a “Call on OPEC“. That is, the IEA looks at the world oil supply and if they see a supply shortage looming on the horizon they then issue a “Call on OPEC” to supply x number of extra barrels and fill that gap. But the next time the IEA issues such a call can OPEC deliver? Or, is OPEC already producing every barrel they possibly can.

One thing for sure, there are eight OPEC countries that are definitely producing every barrel they possibly can, those countries are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar and Venezuela. The chart below is the combined production of those 8 nations.

All charts in this post are “Crude Only” in kb/d with the last data point Jan. 2014.

There can be no doubt that all eight of these OPEC countries are producing every barrel they possibly can. While it is true that Iran and Libya have political problems that is holding their production back, but political problems in that part of the world are likely to get worse rather than better.

But what about the other four OPEC nations. The chart below shows the combined production of Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

It is my contention that not only are these four OPEC nations producing every barrel they possibly can but that they have little prospect of producing much more. I will examine each country one by one.

Read More

EIA’s Petroleum Supply Monthly by State, Texas Reporting Problems

02/28/201402/28/2014 Ron Patterson 319 Comments

The EIA releases two monthly petroleum data sets for US oil production. The Monthly Energy Review which gives the US production and consumption of all forms of energy, oil, natural gas, coal and electricity. The other, the Petroleum Supply Monthly deals only with petroleum but gives every possible statistic, production, refining, export and import from every state and district.

Concerning total US crude oil production the two should agree but they don’t. From December 2011 back they have the exact same production numbers but the near months differ greatly. I have found that the latter, the Petroleum Supply Monthly is the most accurate. The Monthly Energy Review usually changes their numbers to match the Petroleum Supply Monthly but both revise their numbers as more accurate numbers come in. They both are published the last week of the month but the M.E.R is always a month ahead with their data.

Here are their the numbers in KB/d and the difference between the two.

Notice that the former had US production up by 333 kb/d in December while the latter had US production down by 77 kb/d in December. But both will be revised to match what each state or pad reports later on.

There is no uniform reporting strategy among different states. They all appear to do it differently and on a different time frame. For instance the PSM, which is the only one of the two that reports state by state production number, reports the exact same numbers for North Dakota that we get from North Dakota. But they get their Texas data from the Texas Rail Road Commission. And the Texas RRC is very delinquent with their reporting. They just report the numbers as they come in from the field and every month they change as more numbers come in, sometimes taking many months until all the numbers are in. So the EIA just guesses at Texas production numbers.

Texas and North Dakota daily C+C production in KB/D. The last data point is December 2013.

Notice the last nine months are extremely linear. In fact each month, April through December, Texas monthly crude production increased by exactly 50,000 barrels per day.
Read More

When Will Peak Oil Actually Arrive? Costs Way Too High and Rising

02/25/201402/25/2014 Ron Patterson 210 Comments

When will Peak Oil actually arrive? There has been considerable debate on that point recently. Well if you are talking about “Conventional Crude Oil” it arrived in 2005. But in many cases unconventional crude oil works just as well so I think we must count that. I will comment on that at the end of this post below.

The chart below is kb/d with the last data point, 2013, is the average through October.

Averaging the first 10 months of 2013, World oil production was up only 66,000 barrels per day. And without the US LTO input, world production would have been down 807,000 barrels per day, lower than the 2005 level.

And it is all about LTO, primarily it is about three oil plays, the Bakken, Eagle Ford and the Permia.

The data for this chart was taken from the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report. The data is through December 2013 but the last four months must be taken with a grain of salt. They are nothing but a wild guess from the EIA. For instance December production in the Bakken was down over 50,000 barrels per day but the this report has the Bakken up by over 20,000 bp/d. Not to worry however they will correct the data in three or four months.

Read More

Reverse Engineering the North Dakota Bakken Data

02/21/201402/25/2014 Ron Patterson 138 Comments

Notice: The data I thought would be out today: EIA Crude Oil Production by State will not be out until Thursday, Feb. 27th. However I will have another post coming out later today anyway.

This is a guest post by Ovi Colavincenzo

There is considerable discussion on this site regarding when the North Dakota portion of the Bakken will peak. Having looked at the monthly Bakken data that the State publishes, it raised the question of whether it was possible to do a reverse analysis of the data and then use it to develop a model that would replicate the ND Bakken production, exactly. The objective being to provide further insight on what is happening in the ND Bakken.

In order to do this, the following conditions and information were required:

A monotonically increasing number of new producing wells
A typical/average decline curve for the ND Bakken field
Not too many wells being shut/reworked each month

The last bullet is a preferred condition because if a number of low producing wells are shut and replaced by newer high producing wells, then the estimated flow rate of the new wells will be on the high side.

From 1999 to mid 2005, approximately 200 wells were in production in every month. The addition of an increasing number of new wells began to occur in mid-2005, so start date for the analysis was set at the beginning of 2008 to address the first bullet point above.

Figure 1: Source: The Shale Revolution” by J.D. Hughes

For the decline curves, two were used and are shown in Figures 1 and 2. One came from “The Shale Revolution” by J.D. Hughes, November 19, 2013 shown in Figure 1. The other came from North Dakota’s Directors cut, “Tribal Leader Summit” 09 05 12 (PDF), Figure 2.

Figure 2: Source: North Dakota Director’s Cut “Tribal Leader Summit”

Read More

EIA’s International Energy Statistics C+C Update – October Production Data

02/19/201402/19/2014 Ron Patterson 67 Comments

The EIA has updated their International Energy Statistics with the October data. There were some major revisions in the September data. I only track Crude + Condensate so all figures and graphs are for C+C only.

Revisions for September were World, revised down 417 kb/d, Non-OPEC revised down 377 kb/d, Canada revised down 327 kb/d and Brazil revised down 54 kb/d. All other revisions were minor.

After revisions World C+C production was up 454 kb/d, Non-OPEC up 469 kb/d, Canada up 338 kb/d, China up 148 kb/d, Libya up 190 kb/d, Iraq up 150 kb/d, Saudi Arabia was down 300 kb/d and Australia was down 71 kb/d. Lots of other ups and downs but all smaller.

World C+C, average through October for 2013 is up 115 kb/d over the average of 2012.

Non-OPEC average C+C for 2013 through October is up 825 kb/d over 2012.