The OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with OPEC crude only production numbers for March 2015.
OPEC production was up 812,000 barrels per day. The increase came primarily from three countries:
Saudi Arabia was up 347,000 barrels per day to 10,010,000 bpd.
The Texas Railroad Commission has released its incomplete production data for February. The RRC also estimates final production but that data has not been posted yet.
All Texas RRC data is through February. The EIA data is through January.
It looks like, after the final Texas data comes in, that February crude oil will be above January production but still below December production. It is my best guess that Texas production will be down about 80,000 barrels per day in January and up about 50,000 bpd in February or about 30,000 bpd below December production.
I always post the last six months data just so we can get some idea of the general trend. You can see the general trend is up until January when it took a huge hit and only partially recovered in February.
The EIA came out with its final update of Annual Energy Outlook 2015. It seems that the EIA is extremely optimistic concerning future US crude oil production.
Here is a comparison with AEO 2014. The EIA still expects US crude production to peak in 2019 but at 10,472,000 bpd or 824,000 barrels per day higher than the expected last year. But the biggest difference is in the EIA’s change in decline expectations. They now expect the US to be producing 9,329,000 bpd in 2040 or 1,812 higher than they had 2040 production last year. This is the EIA’s reference, or most likely case.
Production from tight formations leads the growth in U.S. crude oil production across all AEO2015 cases. The path of projected crude oil production varies significantly across the cases, with total U.S. crude oil production reaching high points of 10.6 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in the Reference case (in 2020), 13.0 million bbl/d in the High Oil Price case (in 2026), 16.6 million bbl/d in the High Oil and Gas Resource case (in 2039), and 10.0 million bbl/d in the Low Oil Price case (in 2020).
The NDIC Bakken Production Data and the NDIC North Dakota Production Data is in. Production in the Bakken was down 11,941 barrels per day and production in all North Dakota was down 14,104 bpd. The numbers for January were revised slightly. January Bakken was down 35,064 from December and all North Dakota was down 36,331 bpd from December.
As I have pointed out before, the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report, for some unknown reason, estimates the last six or seven months, when the actual data is available. In the above chart they estimate from October on. This throws their current numbers way off. The DPR data includes the Montana Bakken therefore their numbers will naturally be higher than the North Dakota data.
Of course the EIA DPR will eventually bring their numbers into what North Dakota is reporting. The above is what the eventual Drilling Productivity Report will look like. (In Orange). Here is the amount the historical DPR is off.
The EIA just released its Drilling Productivity Report for April. In this report they have post what they expect the shale production data will look like through May 2015.
The EIA is expecting a rounded top for shale production. They are expecting a big drop of total shale production in May to the tune of 56,673 barrels per day. In April they had total shale production down 2,098 bpd.
The EIA has Bakken, Eagle Ford and Niobrara down but still has the Permian up by 10,647 bpd.