Coal Shock Model

This is a guest post by Dennis Coyne.

The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Ron Patterson.

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The eventual peak in World fossil fuel output is a potentially serious problem for human civilization. Many people have studied this problem, including Jean Laherrere, Steve Mohr, Paul Pukite (aka Webhubbletelescope), and David Rutledge.

I have found Steve Mohr’s work the most comprehensive as he covered coal, oil, and natural gas from both the supply and demand perspective in his PhD Thesis. Jean Laherrere has studied the problem extensively with his focus primarily on oil and natural gas, but with some exploration of the coal resource as well. David Rutledge has studied the coal resource using linearization techniques on the production data (which he calls logit and probit).

Paul Pukite introduced the Shock Model with dispersive discovery which he has used primarily to look at how oil and natural gas resources are developed and extracted over time. In the past I have attempted to apply Paul Pukite’s Shock Model (in a simplified form) to the discovery data found in Jean Laherrere’s work for both oil and natural gas, using the analysis of Steve Mohr as a guide for the URR of my low and high scenarios along with the insight gleaned from Hubbert Linearization.

In the current post I will apply the Shock model to the coal resource, again trying to build on the work of Mohr, Rutledge, Laherrere, and Pukite.
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US Oil Rig Count Points To A Sharp Decline In Production

The North American Baker Hughes Rig Count came out Friday. The decline continues. Baker Hughes gives an oil and gas breakout for every basin and state with five years of historical data.

Bh Historical

Baker Hughes has twenty eight and one half years of historical data for total US rigs but only five years for individual basins. Gas rigs peaked in August 2008 at 1,606 rigs, over six years before the peak in Oil rigs. On February, 26, gas total US gas rig count stood at 102, a decline of over over 93%.

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Oil Price And Its Effect On Production

The JODI Oil World Database came out a few days ago. The data is through December 2015. The JODI C+C production numbers differs somewhat from the EIA numbers. The JODI OPEC numbers are crude. Also there are a few very small producers that do not report to JODI so their numbers will be slightly less than the EIA. But otherwise they are pretty accurate.

Also, JODI, for some reason, does not count all of Canada’s oil sands production. So for Canada I use Canada’s National Energy Board numbers instead.

The JODI C+C numbers, for Non-OPEC, will average about 2.4 million barrels per day less than the EIA. This is largely due to some countries not reporting to JODI. But these countries only have small changes in their overall production so would have little effect on any of my charts or calculations.

JODI World C+C

According to JODI, world crude oil production peaked, so far, in July and has declined by 339,000 barrels per day.

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Texas Oil Production Still on a Plateau

The Texas RRC Oil and Gas Production Data is out. There appeared to be no decline in December production and may have even been a slight increase. 

The Texas RRC data is incomplete and only gives an indication as to whether Texas production increased or decreased. The data appears to droop because each month the the Texas Railroad Commission receives a little more data and the totals increase, little by little, month by month, until after many months the data is complete.

In my charts I post the past six months of data in order to give some indication as to whether production is increasing or decreasing. The final data is through December and the EIA data is through November.

Texas C+C

Texas crude plus condensate declined a little in November but seemed to make up that decline in December. Total Texas C+C seems to be on a flat plateau, declining in Eagle Ford but making up that decline in the Permian and the rest of Texas.

The EIA estimates the final Texas data through November. They have Texas peaking in March and down about a quarter of a million barrels per day since that point.

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