The latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out. There were no big surprises.
OPEC crude only production was up 23,000 bpd in May but that was after April had been revised upward by 110,000 bpd.
Almost no change is Saudi production, down 5,000 bpd to 10,107,000 bpd.
The EIA has released its latest Drilling Productivity Report. There were some interesting data presented in the report.
They say the Bakken peaked at 1,311,703 barrels per day in March and will have declined by 74,763 bpd in July.
The EIA says the Bakken will get 51,000 barrels per day in July from new wells but legacy wells will decline by 80,000 barrels per day leaving a decline of 29,000 bpd.
The EIA publishes every possible energy stat for the USA and hardly anything for the rest of the world. Well, anything current for the rest of the world anyway. Their International Energy Statistics is already five full months behind and working on six. December 2014 is the last international oil production data we have.
Anyway during this lull in other data I decided to look at the last three years of international data, from December 2011 to December 2014. All data is in thousand barrels per day.
World C+C production was flat for most of 2012 and 2013 but in late 2013 production took off and has increased by about 3 million barrels per day above the average for 2012 and 2013. December C+C production was 79,300,000 BPD.
This is a guest post by Dennis Coyne.
The views expressed in this post are those of Dennis Coyne and do not necessarily represent those of Ron Patterson.
How much oil can be extracted from known oil resources profitably? This depends on many factors, the price of oil and technological progress in oil extraction methods are the chief factors, but improved knowledge gained through the development wells drilled and the corresponding output and geological data as known reserves are developed is important as well. Oil reserves do not grow, they deplete as the oil is produced. With increasing knowledge, oil price, and improved technology and production methods, the estimate of oil reserves changes over time and on average these estimates tend to increase, this is what we mean by reserve growth.
The United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) has detailed data on proven (1P) reserves and proven discoveries from 1977 to 2013, but Jean Laherrere has taught us that it is proved plus probable (2P) reserves that we should focus on.
OPEC publishes monthly production data for all OPEC nations in their Monthly Oil Market Report. The data crude oil production only and does not include condensate. I have found the data to be highly accurate and any errors are corrected in the next month’s report or the month following that. The OPEC data is from OPEC’s “Secondary Sources”.
The EIA also publishes OPEC production data in their International Energy Statistics. However the EIA does not publish crude only data. Their data includes condensate.
All data is in thousand barrels per day. The last EIA data point is December 2014 and the last OPEC data point is April 2015.
Almost 20% of Algeria’s production is condensate if the EIA is correct. Algeria does produce a lot of condensate but I have serious doubts about the accuracy of the EIA data. As you can see from the chart the EIA has Algeria’s production absolutely flat for 24 months, from January 2010 through December 2011. But both the EIA and OPEC agree on one point, Algeria is in decline.