Non-OPEC’s Oil Production Rise Continues in October

175 thoughts to “Non-OPEC’s Oil Production Rise Continues in October”

1. Opec+ production slips, driven by Saudi drop

   Opec+ production fell in January, pulled down by lower Mideast Gulf supplies and a slight decline in Russian output.

   Production slipped by 250,000 b/d to 38.06mn b/d, more than 2mn b/d below the group’s combined quota (see table). This was the biggest mismatch between actual and targeted production since October, when the group’s collective target was much higher.

   Production by non-Opec members fell by 110,000 b/d thanks to lower supplies from Bahrain, Malaysia and Russia. Opec members’ production was 140,000 b/d lower as Saudi output fell by 220,000 b/d, under pressure from a steep drop in exports and a maintenance-driven decline in refinery throughputs. Iraqi production edged down after bad weather disrupted Basrah loadings and outages curbed runs at a number of refineries in the country.

   These falls were partly offset by a rebound in Nigerian output, which increased for a fourth consecutive month to 1.38mn b/d. But a recovery in Bonny Light output looks to have stalled, possibly because of the shutdown of one of the grade’s supply pipelines. Nigeria was still producing 360,000 b/d below quota in January despite the monthly increase, while Angola fell 310,000 b/d short. Saudi production was 230,000 b/d under target.

   There is a lot more to this article, including a table showing the production of every OPEC nation as well as every OPEC+ nation. A comparison is made with December production as compared to January production.

   1. Ron

      There appears to be a difference of opinion between Argus and Platts.

      The OPEC+ coalition increased its crude oil production by 40,000 b/d in January, the latest Platts survey by S&P Global Commodity Insights found, as Russian production remained relatively resilient to the impact of sanctions.

      Russia’s volumes fell just 10,000 b/d in the month to average 9.85 million b/d, according to the survey, despite an EU embargo on imports of Russian crude and an accompanying G7 price cap that went into force Dec. 5.

      Elsewhere, Nigeria and Congo-Brazzaville showed healthy recoveries, offsetting declines in Saudi Arabia and neighboring Bahrain.

      OPEC’s 13 members pumped 29.09 million b/d in January, up 110,000 b/d from December, the survey found, while the bloc’s nine allies led by Russia produced 13.66 million b/d, down 70,000 b/d.

      I have attached the production file because Platts on occasion does not permit it.

      https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/020923-opec-january-crude-oil-output-grows-with-russia-still-resilient-to-sanctions-platts-survey

      

      1. Yeah, I saw Platts’s survey and was aware of the discrepancy. Obviously, one of them is wrong. Here is the big difference. From Argus:

         Opec members’ production was 140,000 b/d lower as Saudi output fell by 220,000 b/d, under pressure from a steep drop in exports and a maintenance-driven decline in refinery throughputs.

         Platts has Saudi Arabia down only 60 Kbp/d.

         Your chart is November to December, Not December to January. Here is the Platts Data. OPEC+ January crude oil output grows, with Russia still resilient to sanctions: Platts survey

         Either way, we will know when the OPEC MOMR comes out Tuesday.

   2. Thank you OVI for the work. After reading it, I went through the comments. Interesting to say the least. This year will show a much clearer tendency.

2. No comment is the best comment .
   https://mishtalk.com/economics/without-subsidies-how-many-people-will-buy-an-ev

   1. This diagram displays the number of BEV sales for USA, China, EU and Germany. For the EU and USA the data are for quarters and divided by three to get monthly values.
      And the end of each year, the sales numbers jump, and fall in january.

      And a remark: In Germany, the subsidies are introduced, to reduce the CO2 emissions. In 2022, coal power plants have been reactivated, and the CO2 emissions have increased. Despite about subsidies in the order of 5 billion euros for car buyers in 2022, the CO2 emissions have been larger than in 2021. No effect by all the subsidies concerning CO2 !
      In China, more than 50 percent of electricity are generated using coal, increasing in 2022. No effect by all the subsidies concerning CO2 !

      

   2. I have two close friends that just purchased PHEV,s ONLY because of the subsidies. They would not have considered the purchases otherwise.

3. Non-OPEC’s Oil Production Rise Continues in October . Yeps . 2 mbpd below it’s peak in 2019 . If you are in a hole 50 ft down and clawback 25 ft , you are still in the hole . 🙂

4. Thanks for the work Ovi, always appreciated.

   1. Schinzy

      Thanks. Much appreciated.

5. Interesting .

   

   1. HIH

      In the US update last week, the attached chart was posted. The November and December rates are very similar to the numbers for peak rate in your chart.

      

6. “Natural gas gross withdrawals from horizontal wells in the United States…accounted for 78% of all U.S. natural gas production.”

   

   1. In 2021 64% of US oil production was from shale wells, 15% from the GOM and 4% from Alaska, per EIA.

      1. Shallow,

         with respect to your question on the last post, most mlps, incurred massive capex as they were installing the infrastructure to build out the markets and deliver supplies. We will never know what they (stock price) would have done had the covid shut down not occurred, but I saw that as an opportunity to build positions in several companies including PAA, EPD, and ET. This is not a promotion but the theory for me is nat gas will be the bridge fuel to nuclear, largely because it has to be. It’s cheap, it’s abundant, it’s relatively dispersed and it’s geographically available. Because it’s a vastly abundant commodity and subject to huge price swings, I hope to capture the growth in the industry while limiting my risk exposure. Much like buffett I tend to make investments with long holding periods. To LTO’s point, I have know idea who will be right, LTO or PAA’s management, but with the majors picking up steam and with the wide level of contacts they should have their finger on the pulse of what is going on. Also, in the article I posted, it noted DVN is building a new pipeline from WAHA to the gulf coast. I also own DVN. There is a whole different discussion about this that we should have at another time. One of the clues on how the whole horizontal play was going to fully play out was watching the capex of the midstream guys, where and why are they putting resources in the ground. I pointed this out a number of times on this blog at the time.

         Despite some folks views of executive management in general and oil and gas specifically, my experience is that they are generally pretty sharp, they are problem solvers, not all will win, it does not work that way, but one should at least pay attention to what they are saying. Those companies that are now past covid with much stronger financials are in a good position going forward in my opinion. my regards

         1. I bought HEP back in 2011. Sold it in 2019. Didn’t do well and K-1’s were a pain. Also owned CLMT and LGCY (which eventually went BK).

            Lost money on all 3 MLP’s that I owned so I swore them off.

            1. I bought one short after the corona crash, but already sold it because it had a big run and my depot bank was revolting because they couldn’t do K1’s. I donated the tax just to the US government (payed double).
               But it was a 400% run in one year, they have been in fire sale in May 2020.
               It sucked buying them before 2020 – I think they will be in permanent decline since the oil and gas boom is temporary.
               With 5-7% dividend they need at least 20 years to pay out investment (I bought mine at 25% dividend) before a gain – and I don’t give the oil and gas boom much longer even when the stuff is needed (political reasons).
               So the current price of them doesn’t leave space for much improvement, beside the normal up and down of the stock exchange.

               1. I am going to take the other side of that bet. Good trade however on your part. Like you, I bought my initial positions during the spring and summer of 2020. They were being dumped, despite some them cutting their distributions to repair their balance sheets, EPD being an exception, they continue to increase their distributions and buy back units. My cost basis has been cut in half from my original purchases, the increase in the distributions give me a mid teens payout, on top of the near double of unit price. So getting 15% annual return in the distribution that is rolled back in on a quarterly or semi annual basis gets me the compounding effect while generating cash flows that will be take free until my units are fully paid for. Depending on what you believe inflation is that is equal to or better. Now if you truly think the companies have a short life cycle yea, no since holding them. But that conclusion is not backed up by the continued expansion of their lines or the number of long term purchase agreements that are being made. I don’t have the numbers on my fingertips, but the increase in demand of LNG as well as the infrastructure to both ship and receive is off the charts worldwide. Of course again, you might be right, these folks probably don’t have a clue as to what they are doing. Same with coal miners, unless governments worldwide outlaws the use of fossils fuels, the low cost provider will win out in the long term🖖
                  https://www.infrastructureinvestor.com/europes-energy-crisis-turns-lng-into-a-hot-opportunity/

         2. It’s impossible for natural gas to be become the bridge between oil and nuclear power. Indeed, the world natural gas production will peak around 2030 according to an analysis of gas reserves and production data from rystad data base (think tank ” the shift project”). Instead of dreaming of extracting natural gas, it would be more useful to begin building facilities to produce with bioreactors microalgal biomass for methanisation. The technologies to mass produce microalgal biomass are available and are already used for the production of chemicals coming from the microalgae.

         3. It’s impossible for natural gas to be become the bridge between oil and nuclear power. Indeed, the world natural gas production will peak around 2030 according to an analysis of gas reserves and production data from rystad data base (think tank ” the shift project”). Instead of dreaming of extracting natural gas, it would be more usefull to begin building facilities to produce with bioreactors microalgal biomass for methanisation. The technologies to mass produce microalgal biomass are available (yes, royalties must be paid for scientific institutes holding the patents) and are already used for the production of chemicals coming from the microalgae.

            1. JFF , right and wrong .
               1 . Natural gas as a bridge . Yes you are right . It is imposible .
               2 . Microalgae or whatsoever . You are wrong .
               What you are suggesting is rearranging the chairs on the deck of The Titanic . We all know how that ended .

         4. “US Shale to Set New Output Record in March. According to the EIA’s latest Drilling Productivity Report, crude output from the US’ seven biggest shale basins will rise to a record 9.36 million b/d in March on higher Permian production, up 75,000 b/d from this month, setting a new all-time high. ”

            https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/US-Shale-To-Set-Production-Record-In-March.html

            I am not taking a position on this just posting the estimates, that is one estimate from government and one from industry saying the Permian production is going up this year. to be determined on how much

   2. Eagle Ford Resource Cost Curve. Just love it when people go all the way down the rabbit hole.

      Article from here: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/weekly/archive/2022/220803/includes/analysis_print.php

      

      1. Deceptive. Sloppy writing is, I believe, what you said about mine.

         “Down the rabbit hole” is an insult to people and implies they can’t think for themselves. People that are worried about their oil future are NOT stupid, or un-American. For instance people DO know the Permian is actually two, distinctly different sub basins. They are also beginning to see a big problem down the road, in spite of the lying. Scary, ain’t it?

         Past performance is never indicative of future results.

         Profitability is a qualitative term; I never heard, “internal rates of return” in the 60 years I’ve been a WI owner until the tight oil phenomena came along. Its corporate doo-doo. It matters only how long it takes to get your money back, and what the ROI is over how many years. ROI is what keeps the tight oil business’ credit cards in their purse, not 10% IRR with selective costs ignored. Who picked 10% IRR as a benchmark? Rystad? Phfttttt.

         Stick a fork in the Eagle Ford, its done. The recent uptick in rig counts WAS gas price related. They’re also drilling a few deeper laterals below the upper EF to AC facices change in Karnes, in a deep, thick section of shale. Good wells. The hole is small, limited. Won’t last long, IMO.

         Folks genuinely interested in their oil future need to realize that data is now days easily manipulated. Second, know your source. Lobbyists are paid to lie. Politicians lie to say what people want to hear, for votes. Thirdly, royalty owners getting free income in America’s shale basins are ALWAYS going to have a whole different idealism and data set than anyone else…don’t mess with them. They’ll cut your liver out before they’d admit things were changing. Free royalty owners need your support, and your money.

         

7. With regards to pipelines, they are like toll roads, with one exception: at some point the commerce that pays the toll dries up. Right now there is amazing need for just about every pipeline that will carry NG in Texas. This is made more attractive by the fact that the Permian is becoming gassier by the day as the GOR of oil wells increases. But one has to interpret that in the proper perspective too. An increasing GOR is an end-of-life marker. Next will come an increasing WOR when the salts migrate in, pulling in water, and that’s it. Not to pour water on your investment idea but the important part is going to not be when to get in, but when to get out, because at some point these will be pipelines with no transportation commerce.

8. No disagreement Gerry. While I have noted the concern on this blog relating to the rising GOR in the Permian I think many “may” be missing the bigger picture. In other words, I do not believe DVN is building their new pipe line to capture that gas. They have bigger fish in mind.

   I have not worked professionally the Permian but I think I have figured out what is going on. Watching how this is playing out, there are numerous long term 20 years nat gas contracts being signed by energy hungry countries out into the future. The US midstream is getting their share. Let’s say you have some huge gas reserves, currently you do not want to develop them as it does not make sense economically. What do you do? Do you build your own pipeline, eliminate the middle man and get the volume and pricing in place before you kick off development? just an Idea. Something to watch.

   I know of several very large landowners (minerals owners) whose land sits atop mostly gas reserves. There is no take way capacity for that gas right now. Interesting enough some of these formations are the same ones being exploited in the Anadarko basin. Again in the Anadarko you have an oil leg, a wet gas leg and a dry gas leg, same in the Eagleford. There is hardly any development in the gas leg of these reservoirs, but they are vast. IN other words there is going to be gas to put in those lines for sometime to come. IMHO.

   1. Good point.

      I have some holdings in the dry gas part of the Anadarko Basin (the Hogshooter formation of the Granite Wash) and those pipes are running about half full.

      However, there is room for a resurgence in that basin.

      There’ll be gas in the Permian pipelines for a very long time, too.

9. For those dismissive of nuclear i give you:

   https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/business/companies/20230210-90175/

   every journey starts with a first step. many reason for this, you have a bankrupt country that probably does not want to be dependent on their biggest enemy (threat) China (materials)for their energy security.

   1. Japan has to import all their uranium. At what future price? While the stuff coming from Canada and Australia might continue to make it to Japan, maybe. The stuff from Kazakhstan probably won’t make the journey.

      Nuclear only has a future if you can source the fuel at a price you can pay. If your currency hyper inflates due to lack of available energy supply. You won’t be importing expensive fuel to keep the lights on.

10. Oh well, its back to the drawing board for the green energy enthusiast:

    “It is this simple truth that drives corporate decisions on spending and production growth or de-growth. It’s the most fundamental rule of economics, and that’s the rule of supply and demand. As Shell’s former chief executive Ben van Beurden once put it, while the world needs oil, we will continue to supply it with oil.

    The other pretty simple truth that prompted Big Oil majors to step back from their transition path may well have been the subpar performance of low-carbon energy lately. Cost inflation, component failures, and trade tensions with China, the undisputed leader in the manufacturing segment of the renewable energy industry, have all combined to push returns from these ventures lower.

    Government subsidies seem to have not been enough to motivate Big Oil to stick to that path without even looking at alternative routes to its promised net-zero future.”

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Big-Oils-Back-In-Fashion.html

    1. All the yield curves. Be it treasury yields, Eurodollars, German bunds, or even the Canadian yield curve are calling for lower yields on bonds.

       You can’t square lower bond yields and higher oil and gas prices. In current environment higher energy prices equals higher bond yields.

       Bond yields are pricing in recession and lower yields.

       The market is betting massively that the central banks don’t have a clue. And are raising interest rates for all the wrong reasons. And disinflation and deflation are more of a concern than inflation will ever be.

       1. From Javier Blas
          @JavierBlas

          “It increasingly looks like the Biden administration missed the window to buy oil for the SPR. US officials said they wanted to see prices in the $67-$72 range.

          WTI is not trading at $72 until January 2025. And the benchmark is not trading below $67 until March 2026 | #OOTT”

11. Art Berman on spacing .
    https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1624790180556075010

    1. Spacing on shale wells that he claimed won’t make significant oil in the US? Or maybe Barnett wells with $3000/month OpX? I was at one of his SIPE talks when he claimed that the first horizontal ever drilled was in the early 80’s. Amusingly, the directional drillers I learned from had been doing them since the 60’s. A history major was Art’s first degree, maybe he just couldn’t be bothered to even learn the history of the oilfield prior to saying silly stuff?

12. Art Berman graph .

    

    1. Art’s EURs, or did he get them from Enverus? Particularly PRISM. Anyone want to use their license to find out, or do I have to? In the past Art has seemed to lowball EURs when compared to the work of folks who do it for a living. These ones look relatively high, so I’d say there is a reaosnable chance he just used the software to do some time vintaging. It is common with the 2 main information providers. When compared to the folks who have done them for a living and are required to swear to it on the SEC forms and reserve audit reports. They know what they are doing and the numbers usually undercut the more automated nature of the systems used by the subscription services to generate them.

       1. You like to rail on people anonymously, without using your real name, so by my way of thinking it’s hard to give your comments much credibility. I assume you are reservoir engineer, who thinks his shit doesn’t stink, this thing with Berman is part of a century old age rift between engineers and geologists and that years ago Berman made some predictions based on rock that did not come to fruition because of $400B of borrowed capital and fiscal irresponsibility.

          I am neither an engineer nor a geologist but have been drilling oil and gas wells, with my own money, likely while you were struggling with History 101. Well productivity in HZ tight oil wells IS going down in the Permian, gassy oil wells are turning into oily gas wells, late life decline rates are accelerating and liquids EUR’s are headed down. Let’s not confuse liquids with BOE at 6:1; THAT trick is really getting old.

          In the unlikely event anybody actually believes that reservoir engineers are required to “swear” by reserve audits on SEC forms, and never exaggerate, or never lie, shall we take a little stroll thru recent history? With Shell, or Exxon? How about Degolyer etal’s work in the KSA? The WSJ caught the tight oil industry red handed just a few years ago exaggerating EUR’s, booked PDP, and proximity based PUD reserves. Likvern and others have since proven the WSJ’s allegations.

          I know Art, I am sure he’d appreciate you confronting him directly, not from a distance. He uses his own name and is criticized constantly. He’ll be ready. In the meantime I would, personally, love to see something you have published about Permian EUR’s.

          By the way, I don’t see US or world reserves growing every year, I see them yo-yoing with a definite trend down, depending, of course, on who’s lying about what.

          1. I stay anonymous because I learned my lesson circa 2005 about faith based believers. When irritated at what you say online, they then show up at the office and need turned away by the armed guards. Let alone the emails to the boss. Oh, maybe not the fine upstanding citizens around here, but when you disturbed their belief system back in 2005, well, things were different then. Like I want the armed, prepper, doomers knowing my name and where I live. There is also what I do for a living, which directly touches on the subject of resources and reserves, domestic and global, both the scientific analysis and practical application sides. And I’m not paid to educate the world through anything other than my work published work on the topic, scientific, practical application, projections, or otherwise.

             I don’t “know” Art…but I pay attention to what he says. Any reason why you didn’t once contradict some of the absolutely ridiculous things he has claimed in his defense? Do you believe a petroleum geologist not even knowing that a source rock can be a rock rock and make prolific amounts of oil in the US is a GOOD thing?

             If you wish to talk about reserves and their growth down through the ages, or particulars on how those numbers can go sideways, I’d be happy to. But that conversation begins with the obvious of course. Back around the mid 90’s there were XX barrels of oil reserves on the planet. Today, after cumulative production more than those reserves, the current reserve number is higher. Reservegrowthrulz for a reason, and even if it can’t go on forever because that is ridiculous, once you understand a basic fact of the past, and how and why it occurs, then you can begin the conversation on how to predcit it in the future. A necessary part of any peak oil model obviously, and Hubbert knew it in the early 70’s and stopped publication of a paper until he could account for it. His first quantification of it put to practical uses was with the USGS in 1975. I agree with folks who think it is important of course.

             You know Art? Cool. Go ask him how he managed to pull the stunts I mentioned, and what has he learned from having been proven wrong. Because while I don’t “know” him, I was there when he said these things (SIPEs talks or AAPG national convention), or they were wonderfully captured on video for future use. Why he couldn’t be even be bothered to pick up the phone, talk to those of us who had been doing shale development since the 80’s, and ask a few questions prior to ponticating, well, only he knows the answer to that one.

             1. So let me get this straight – back in 2005 some peak oil folks showed up at your office and threatened your life and had to be escorted away by armed guards? As someone active in the peak oil community then I feel like this would have been big news. Let me just say I’m struggling with this narrative.

                1. I struggled with the fact of it when the boss came into my office that day and told me what had happened. And why would it be big news? Were you watching the serious peak oilers back in the day, rather than the nutters? They are different groups, live in two different ecosystems, and both are fascinating.

                2. And because of that 18 years ago you’re too chickenshit to use your real name

                3. There are to many guns and poorly educated nut cases with miss placed egos out there. RESERVEGROWTHRULZ is no fool.

                   An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

                4. RGR , on your comments regarding Mr Berman and Mr Shellman > “The lady doth protest too much, methinks ” . — Hamlet .

                5. At one time we were advised to be careful about using your actual name on the internet as it may get back to your employer. But over time we realized that If all you do is write about science and scientific ideas on the net, it doesn’t matter because no is actually paying attention, and least of all intellectually curious.

             2. RGR,
                some folks may be missing the forest because of the trees. There are more than one type of “analyst.” There are those who want to be right, that is correct/accurate because their reputation and personal and perhaps their professional integrity demands it. They study the data, they draw appropriate conclusions, they adjust as new data comes in, self correct and they admit when they are wrong.

                But then there is the other kind, the screamers, the doom and gloomers, the name callers, the chest pounders, that are in it for the attention, the clicks, to sell a news letter, paid propagandist or whatever. Being accurate, being right, being truthful, being humble, plays no part in their analysis or predictions. I would put Art and Mike in the same category as I put Al Gore and John Kerry and our local guy Steve.

                They are to the oil and gas profession as Gomer and Goober are to the town of Mayberry.

                And there are a number of great Americans who use alias, include Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain. for a complete list I have attached a link. I am sure none of these folks have any balls either. Weak minds develop weak arguments.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pen_names

                1. TT2, or T3, whatever it is at the moment:

                   For me to feel insulted by your comments, I would first have to respect you. I don’t. You are nothing to me. I suspect you are just a day trader worried about anybody hurting your “investment” portfolio. Clearly you have never owned working interest in a tight oil well; anywhere, ever. You have daddy’s RI in Oklahoma, maybe, but when you say ‘we’ just drilled a well it’s because you own stock in somebody who actually did. You’ve never operated, for sure.

                   If you are actually a Texan (God, hep us), please move to Huntington Beach, California… you will raise the average IQ in both states when you do.

                   Mark Twain, dude; you are not.

                   I simply consider you, and anybody else, a coward for insulting others anonymously. HB has insulted my values, my family name (3 generations in Texas oil!) because he simply does not agree with me. How fucked up is that?

                   It’s interesting to me that you. including the engineer, are all deathly afraid of repercussions from your insults, but essentially think it’s good to CONTINUE insulting, as long as it is anonymously. Yikes !

                   RGR, how many people in the front office did you have protecting you while you were telling everybody how stupid they were because they were worried about their oil future? Ten? Good grief. I’ve read your shit on the PO news board. You are flat ass nasty.

                   Howzabout debating without insults, with real data? Or, if you are actually IN the oil business, with experience, with first hand anecdotal evidence? If you don’t like what people write, write something yourself. You did this and that a long time ago ( I use to speak at SIPES meetings all over Texas, BFD), under a big corporate shelter…whup. Got any WI now? I like to debate people with WI, facing P,A & D costs. Get over what Berman said 10 years ago…are you In?

                   TT, you know where I am. come see me anytime. I am not afraid. When you insult a man you should do so, honorably, looking him straight in the eye. Californians don’t do that, real Texans do. I am circulating on bottom, waiting.

                2. So is Art (not sure to which Mike you refer…Ruppert?) being like Al Gore and John Kerry a good comparison, or a bad one? Because I’ll bet you and I don’t necessarily agree on their value in the greater scheme of things either. If you mean that Art is the Gomer and Goober in Mayberry, that comparison makes more sense.

                   And I use an alias because I spent more time with whackadoodle peak oilers in my internet experimentations, and learned early on the disadvantage of being “known” on the internet. I’ve been found out through some detective work of course, made the mistake of mentioning an international presentation of some of my work in England, someone knew where I generally live, went through the speakers, matched the two up, etc etc. That person, while announcing they knew who I was has graciously kept it to themselves unless I say otherwise. Not all peakers are whackadoodles, even the internet based ones.

                3. MS says-“HB has insulted my values, my family name (3 generations in Texas oil!) because he simply does not agree with me. How fucked up is that?”

                   MS, so if I understand you correctly. If someone doesn’t agree with your values, you are insulted. That is fucked up.

                   MS says- “For me to feel insulted by your comments, I would first have to respect you.” Thank you for your respect MS.

                   BTW, those aren’t baby diapers on the sands of Huntington Beach. There oil spill absorbent pads. Anyway, it’s nice to hear Huntington Beach and it’s surfing was your first choice last year for your Christmas vacation.

                   https://darrp.noaa.gov/oil-spills/public-meeting-and-call-restoration-projects-huntington-beach-pipeline-spill-california#:~:text=October 11, 2022&text=An underwater pipeline running from,miles offshore of Huntington Beach.

                   It’s nice to see you posting here at POB. I don’t take your comments personal. I just consider the source.

             3. RGR,

                So more than enough crude oil can be extracted and burned the next years to speed up global warming, making it soon possible for ‘big oil’ to drill the ice free Arctic.

                Lucky worldeconomy; lucky world ?

                “More than enough crude oil” : the number of monster SUV’s on the road can continue to increase. War material can be produced (and used) in increasing quantities, like e.g. NATO and Russia is planning.

                1. All this climate climate climate on TV, internet news and radio – it’s complete BS.

                   It’s not a 100 meter sprint but a marathon, or even an ultra. You calculate around coming out of the start block faster.

                   In the same time Asia build 100 new coal power plants, see the articlese down here. The thing will only be solvable by technology, be it renewable, nuclear, geothermal or even fusion.
                   The new technology must be better than the old one – otherwise it won’t work. TV can scare the white western middle class in going on a vegan diet, but the western wolrd has no means of saying asian and other not westly people what to do. Or their governments, kings and presidents.

                   Even your small successes: The western squeezes of 1 mbd of oil usage with lots of laws, propaganda and taxes – Asia, south america and Africa says thanks to lower oil prices and increases consumption.

                   I can’t even turn the radio on in the car without a moderator saying “What have you done for the clima today?”. In the same time, the last nuclear plants here are shut down and coal plants powered up. Even developing own fracking gas, which produces less CO2 than import LNG or coal is YUCK! It’s kind of a clown world.

                   Sorry for the ranting, it’s not personal – only this TV focus.

                2. Not only is there enough crude and natural gas to melt the poles, depending on price, there is enough to make sure that peak oil isn’t assured in this half of the 21st century. After that however, things get a bit dicier. The climate question, ES&G, legislation and governments deciding to finally do something about an energy transition, all of those would seem quite important to keep sea level rise from erasing Florida from the map.

13. I do find it interesting to hear the various thought modes that result in people being outright opposed to the electrification of transportation.

    -There is simply the vested interest aspect. This is the strongest motivation, with people hoping to profit from oil depletion. For them the greater the shortage of affordable fuel…the better.

    -of course there is the simplistic partisan aspect, with EV’s seen as technology of the socialists, or some such delusional thinking. This notion gets heavy funding from the oil and gas industry through its lobbying and advertising. Interestingly, other big industries like the automobile manufacturing industry of the world is taking the oil depletion scenario seriously.

    -a smaller but very vocal crowd looks forward to the disruption of petrol shortage. They think that the chaotic scenario can be managed to their advantage, or that they will be privileged and avoid the worse of it or even profit from it- for them the greater the shortage of affordable fuel…the better.

    -others think that we can put off development and deployment of EV’s for another 20 years- “just keep things unchanged’ in a business as usual mode. What they fail to realize is that waiting for a shortage of depleting fuel is simply too late to embark on such a big industrial transition. The disruption from waiting until the problem is full blown is just going to be…literally an economic crash.

    Most people of the world prefer to avoid the mule cart scenario.
    On about 4 acres of average grazing land you can sustain a horse.
    For rough comparison reference- one solar panel under average US conditions will provide about
    1500 miles of travel with a midsize AWD electric vehicle.
    More if you live in the sunnier half of the country.
    Many people embrace the idea of owning your own power production facility, even if it is just big enough to cover your annual mileage and home energy needs.

    1. Agree. A lack of clarity regarding the future could be expected, when most people don’t have much time to think about much outside their job and family.

       I have commented a lot about this subject before. It is so hard to understand for very many that it can be useful that we collectively reduce energy consumption for personal transportation a lot, maybe something like 5-10 times through electrification and reducing a little bit of the consumption, and still get a lot of the value out of transportation (not 100%; could be something like 60%-80% depending on what time scale we are regarding economic prosperity). All major changes are hard btw, and the young ones are more likely to embrace it.

       1. Kolbeinih , ” young ones are more likely to embrace it. ” , Your assesment is wrong . 1990-2010 was the MTV generation , 2010-2023 is the I phone generation . I have worked with the young at the University of Gent including exchange students coming from all over Europe under the Erasmus program since 2010 . They are clueless . Their agenda is (1) how to milk their parents for money (2) what the hell to do from Friday evening thru Sunday . Now some realtime info . I have a friend who works for a large ( pan European ) interim . He said that the canditates fail at across the table interviews , Why ? They have lost the art of conversation and cannot maintain eye contact . All young ones are too busy texting . Hopeless or hope less ? 🙂

          1. Interesting comment on same idea…the college I went to is now requiring a typing class for all engineering candidates…turns out youngsters aren’t as familiar with them as they once were.

             1. Reserve growth my arse, light distillate and gas liquids ain’t crude and the US is not a major oil producer it’s all BS.

             2. See this video of 17 years old trying to use a rotary dial phone . ROFL .
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OADXNGnJok&t=6s

14. Behind the curtain stuff from Mike S .
    https://www.oilystuffblog.com/single-post/runnin-outta-ammo?postId=4f5fa577-6863-48f8-93b0-c65d297f9a43&utm_campaign=532577f5-164e-4b16-a3ac-0e564572cf89&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail&utm_content=1837512f-df52-4b83-97d7-9841f93ded83&cid=fa335351-37bb-44a6-9899-f8c34b4a0f81

    1. Behind the curtain indeed. I would want to hide my claims behind one if I got it wrong as well.

       “If it were not for Lea and Eddy Counties in New Mexico, the entire Permian Basin would be declining in liquids production.”

       Oil growth in the Permian Basin, as defined by oil production from all counties considered to have Permian Basin in them, October 2021-October 2022 was 9.9 million barrels/per month (roundable to 10 if I had an urge) larger, give ot take. 26.0% of that came from all the counties Mike claims were declining, 74.0% came from the two counties that appear to be his favorites.

       Why, when this information is so easy to check, would someone say a paragraph earlier “My Goal In Oily Stuff Is Awareness”? How about we just worry about getting it right instead?

       1. I am not trying to hide my “claims, whomever you are. An engineer? I don’t know. You just seem scaret of the ramifications of using your own name when you insult someone.

          I did not use the words “from behind the curtain,” somebody else did. Unlike yourself, I am out there. I ain’t scaret. If you don’t like what I write, don’t insult me behind your keyboard, write your own stuff.

          So only 26% of all growth in the Permian Basin came from outside Lea and Eddy Counties, in New Mexico, the past year? Not my favorite counties, by the way…America’s long term energy future and the oily future of our kids is my favorite. America’s future is my favorite.

          You are the engineer, I am nobody. You have a moral, and very implied, obligation to the country to tell the truth about reserves and all that stuff. Define oil, please. Is that stuff that is important to us, or does that matter to you? You’re not “worried” that 76% of Permian growth came from 1/2 of Lea County and 1/2 of Eddy County? Not worried about pressure depletion, falling productivity? None of that? Good to go for another 25 years?

          I stand by my numbers and what they imply for my country. They are not my numbers, not my data, but stuff from Enervus, Novi, Welldatabase and the TRRC. We can’t lie about realized production in Texas, you know that right? I do indeed want people to see the other side of the rhetoric, to be aware, so they can stop listening to all the lies and make up their own minds. People can do that, you know? Folks are getting on to the tight oil and gas bullshit. They are starting to worry about their oily future, in spite of the dung heap.

          That’s a good thing, right? We need to be ready for whatever arises.

          1. HiH used the “behind the curtain” comment. I used a quote from the webpage as to the apparent dichotomy involved. And I didn’t say I didn’t like what you wrote. I said your information was inaccurate.

             As far as my worries about the Permian, it is certainly important, but just one of the worries on the list when it comes to resource development globally. The Permian is the most interesting domestically at the moment, and the only reason I even noticed your claim is because I found it difficult to believe. And it struck me as interesting to check. You see, what I am interested in is that all US oil growth is Permian based, and therefore by extension 76% of all US oil growth is in your two favorite counties, and 26% in the rest of the Permian. That is interesting. I also used two of the information sources on your list, certainly not Novi however, and two others you didn’t mention. No point in relying on one set knowing from Dennis that some of these folks don’t even do all production, but seem focused on only newer development. Okay for Johnny Come Latelys I suppose, but insufficient for the best answer.

             And those of us in industry when the world exploded post world oil peak in 1979, particularly those of us in the office that day in March 1986 when the price finally just collapsed, know the meaning of oil and gas bullshit, and worrying about our future, and it ain’t yet today what it was then. The day things went negative during Covid was wildly amazing, but that was an exogenous event.

             I have been interested in peak oil since the day after Thanksgiving, 2005, and “worry” isn’t the right description. To even worry, you need to separate fact from fiction from religious dogma, learn about it, figure out why it went wrong so many times from many different angles, correct for that if it even had any value in the first place as an idea, and then gather the resources to solve it. Then you don’t worry anymore, you just run the solutions by scenario and see where your dependencies/sensitivites are. The Permian is no different. Just a pain in the ass with all the stacked formations, and benches within them, and getting the right measures of interference worked out. Not difficult…just a bit labor intensive to work through the data.

             I don’t recommend standing by bad numbers though. As I said, when they are as easy to refute using data from multiple sources it just reflects badly on any conclusions you then draw.

             As far as being “ready”, well aren’t we all after falling for peak oil ever since Colin Campbell declared it globally for 1990? 33 years of getting ready. I figure some of us older farts are going to dieoff naturally waiting to see if Peak Oil #6 this century is finally THE ONE. Or just #6 this century, claimed or occured.

             1. The usual explainer to invoke at this point is to present the discrepancy between USA oil extracted versus oil consumed. On a daily basis, ~12 million barrels of crude are extracted daily from USA territory. Yet, USA consumption hovers around 20 million barrels per day.

                “worry” is always the right description, and if it wasn’t for creative book-keeping suggesting that the USA is “net oil independent”, more people would be concerned.

                1. From your US consumption number you need to deduct US exports of manufactured products from that crude, primarily refined product. 9.9 million barrels a day. So the correct US “consumption” number is more like 10.1 mmbbl/d.

                   Export data: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_exp_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_m.htm

                2. Now do the same for wheat. USA produces 50 million tonnes per year and consumes 30 million. It exports roughly the difference, give or take that some wheat is imported (and then either consumed or re-exported as food products) .

                   Part of the difference is that much of oil is imported for refining and then relabelled as a “domestic” source of oil. So the export page link you provided is the creative book-keeping I am referring to. What we need to see is a Sankey diagram for all the flows of crude oil. Too much is obscured by referring to only tables, as you can’t see the recursive flows.

                3. Paul , agree . Creative book-keeping , like the BLS ( Bureau of Lies and S***) on CPI . First and Estimated CPI , then Actual CPI and then Revised CPI . Funny part is Revised CPI is always highest .Same on the oil markets , some of it evident . Here is a tweet .
                   https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1626262009204420617/photo/1

                4. Reservegrowthrulz,

                   You need to look at net exports as the US imports petroleum products as well. Also much of the products exported are LPG. The best number to look at for consumption might be net crude inputs to refineries minus net exports of liquid fuels (gasoline, jet fuel diesel and residual fuel oil.)

             2. I actually DID write, “without Lea and Eddy Counties the entire Permian Basin would be in liquids decline.” That IS inaccurate. I typically address issues in specific sub-basins within the Permian complex. I have gone back and changed the sentence to say “Delaware Basin.” Regarding that one sentence, I stand corrected.

                The article, by the way, was about rising liquids gravity in New Mexico with comments from two ChEs. The quality of tight oil is not typically something cheerleaders like to address. They tend to just like big new production numbers.

                I was operating in the late 70’s, with my own money at risk. When employees of big corporations lecture me about how hard things use to be, and what I should and should not be concerned about, I tend to tune that stuff out. I like debating things about the future with WI owners, who pay the bills. They tend to be way more realistic. Its a problem to find those kind of folks now days, however, particularly in shale plays. OPM and all that. My biggest critics seldom seem to have skin in the game. Like 2nd and 3rd generation royalty owners.

                I too am an old timer, with many decades of observing decline and depletion, and I’ve learned it’s never too late to grow up, see things differently and embrace change as a simply fact of life. I am not sure what peak ‘oiler’ means but yeah, I am probably one of those.

                Past results are never indicative of future performance, not in my oilfield.

                1. Is it because folks around here don’t have a clue about the difference between the Midland and Delaware sub-basins that allow sloppy words to creep into our posts? Not just yours, I’ve done the same, and often wondered if it is because there is such
                   a large illogical and faith absed contingent that they don’t know the difference between a basin and a formation, let alone have a clue about how long horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing have been going on, and sloppy just tends to work. It isn’t as though have the ability to critique it, let alone have the data to check statements.

                   I’ve noticed the same thing with my online blathering, precision in writing doesn’t get the same rigorous screening that published documents do, and I have also made online boo-boos. No harm no foul, and darn right past results aren’t indicative of future performance in my oil field. I was willing to buy shale development as a stop gap, but not a full blown “Make America Top World Producer Again”. And all those disappointed peakers out there who thought oil production can only go down in the future, imagine the amount of egg on those faces.

15. “I do find it interesting to hear the various thought modes that result in people being outright opposed to the electrification of transportation.”

    Well, there was the Super Bowl ad on “Premature Electrification,” which had to be as much a play on words as a parody of the human male condition. It was one hell of an ad–to go buy a gas-guzzling Ram or F-150 if you want to make sure you don’t run out of . . . power.

    But as Hole In Head posted, the oil production scenario is taking care of the coming shortage in an unfolding train wreck. Mike Shellman pointed out that much of the newly categorized West Texas Light is actually “ultralight,” with an API greater than 50. This is coming from the only remaining spot of frenzied production in the Permian–the mighty Delaware sub-basin.

    API greater than 50 degrees probably shouldn’t be called crude at all, but a condensate representative of the gases involved. So, get ready for this, the western part of the Delaware is actually a wet gas basin selling into a flooded alkane market.

    We are quickly getting into a jam. And it’s going to make any concern about how quickly we convert to EV’s seem like playing with dollhouses.

    1. “We are quickly getting into a jam. ”
       Certainly, and jam is saying it very gently.

       There are not many useful adjustments that can be made that will help adjust to depletion of oil.
       We [US] could enact rationing to slow down consumption, and ban all net oil product exports.
       We could restrict drilling so oil will last longer.
       We could try to become best friends with Venezuela even though they are socialist leaning,
       and we could be better partners with Canada.
       We could put heavy fees on fuel use that is not considered critical.
       If you enjoy watching battles just get a front row seat for enactment of any of these measures.

       And, oh yeh, we could be enthusiastic adopters of electric vehicles… on a national basis.
       It shouldn’t be a partisan/cultural issue at all.

       None of these measures are a cure for depletion or will ‘save the world as we know it’.
       But they all could help to some degree.
       And maybe all will be necessary.

       If it was me and I had to make an order of the option list, first would be a full court press on EV adoption, and second would be heavy fees on frivolous and optional oil use such as leisure travel (air/land/water).
       We are very late to the game.

       What would you add to the list of constructive and effective measures aimed at a continuation of a civilized society facing an escalating problem with affordable transport.
       Lets keep in mind that in most countries of the world, the problem is much worse (earlier) than here in the energy fortunate US.

       1. Optimize travel speed for efficiency, not convenience and in force it.

          1. Here’s the rub if you slow transportation speeds to save fuel to achieve the same economic activity you have to increase the number of transportation vehicles and the infrastructure to carry them. It’s directly proportional. So economic activity will decrease or displace. Maximum Power Principle has probably been past so any choice is likely going to have negative effects.

             1. “It’s directly proportional”

                Bullshit, speed vs. power demand is not a linear function, it’s exponential

                “Air resistance can be calculated by taking air density times the drag coefficient times area all over two, and then multiply by velocity squared.”

                https://howthingsfly.si.edu/ask-an-explainer/how-do-you-calculate-force-air-resistance#:~:text=Air%20resistance%20can%20be%20calculated,then%20multiply%20by%20velocity%20squared.

                “What are the limitations of the Maximum Power Transfer Theorem?
                The critical limitation of the Maximum Power Transfer Theorem is, it cannot be used in nonlinear and unilateral networks. As efficiency drops to 50%, it is also not applicable in power systems.”

                https://byjus.com/physics/maximum-power-transfer-theorem/

       2. I have long ago come to the conclusion that humans will continue to consume all non-renewable resources at grossly unsustainable rates and so-called renewables are really just an extension of the scope of that consumption. Whether it takes a few decades or a century to deplete those resources the final result will be the same. Awareness of the problem has been around for some time but non-renewable resource consumption ( hydrocarbons in particular) keeps on going up, population keeps going up and a vanishingly small percentage of the population is willing to sacrifice any of their standard of living to stretch out the depletion for another decade or two.
          Consider the statement by Macron last fall: “France has come to the end of the era of abundance” about the most understated possible statement of the situation. Has any other leader repeated that statement?
          Made a more honest statement?
          Preservation of a technological civilization will probably depend on a drastic reduction of the world population, coupled with a preservation of knowledge built up so far ( akin to the monasteries in the Middle Ages).
          It is possible to visualize a few islands of technological competence surviving with nuclear reactors powered by military stocks of enriched uranium ( assuming it is not used for bombs). Planning and preparing for that would be prudent.
          There are two potential sources of power to allow a re-emergence of a technological society:
          Fusion power- presently well funded and being pursued by a lot of very smart people, but progress is slow, problems substantial and time is short to preserve BAU.
          Fission power: Proven technology but viable uranium reserves are limited . Thorium is more abundant but with no proven commercial units, and distinct challenges dealing with molten salts if that route is taken.
          There are massive quantities of uranium dissolved in sea water ( very dilute solution). A viable means of extracting this uranium would allow fission to power an industrial/technological civilization for thousands of years. With several decades of relatively cheap uranium available from traditional mining, no private enterprise is chasing this.

16. I have a litany of innovations that probably reflect my life to an extent that is not practical for wholesale adoption. I live in Paradise Valley so I was amazed over the last several days at the number of very large personal jets that came in for the Super Bowl, all of which are expensed for business and pay no surcharge for their carbon footprint. There are over 2,000 of these in the U.S.

    I find it silly to block new NG pipelines, when coal with twice the GHG emission is being burned preferentially because it is cheaper and, in some areas, more accessible. Wyoming, for example, 2X overbuilt its coal-burning Jim Bridger Power Plant in order to sell California electricity. So California can brag about being a coal-burning-free state while importing rescue electricity from coal in Wyoming. And I’m not disparaging Ca or Wy.

    I find it ludicrous that the Global Climate Change Conference gave attaboys to China, even though China put in more coal-burning power plants than the rest of the world put together. They would stop this if commerce were to put the heat on.

    In essence, not to argue the point, but beside this hypocrisy, the EV market pales to the color of anemia. If we’re talking clean air, get rid of the coal tomorrow, slap a “sin tax” on private jets used for fun, put in some NG pipelines. I’ve flown private jet at times, and it’s better, but it’s stupid to use for fun and then drive an EV.

    People are people, and the very rich don’t think they should be damaged by all this climate stuff. Neither does China. In China–and I can say this with certainty–they’re using bituminous coal (soft brown coal) to produce electricity that is used to charge EV’s.

    I applaud any effort to slow the process of global climate change, but without using common sense it’s nothing. And common sense says get rid of coal. Common sense also says ban these “forever gases” that are still being used in the magnetic pivots in the largest wind turbines. Those “F” gases escape, just as any gas, and they have GHG emission ratios (to methane or CO2) in the thousands.

    None of this argument will be taken seriously by the greatest offender–China–until the world community tells them they can’t do it anymore. The more windmills to produce “clean” electricity with which to charge “clean” EV’s, the more “forever gas” is used in the magnetic housing–there to escape at a certifiable and measurable rate. I could go on.

    1. To build upon your china mentions. Let’s try a thought experiment. Using the relative minor, in terms of area (not human tragedy ) the Ukraine war and how it disrupted the global food and energy markets, and how the collective west responded.

       I was completely wrong that Putin would go into Ukraine, there was no way he could take and hold a county that size with the forces he massed. I was shocked, but it happened. Now that we have pushed Russia into the arms of china, who as a global threat was minimized, because they can not feed or fuel themselves. Now they can, with the help of Russia they are now able to contemplate going into Taiwan. I am not predicting this but many are. If that happens what will the western response be. Where will the green energy materials comes from and at what cost. As a business man (dull spoon) these are the type of events we must plan for, we can’t afford to blindly get on a path that leaves us so vulnerable. The answer in part is you can kiss your green transformation goodby, at least for a generation.

       There are several /bloggers journalist, Rapier, Javaier Blas, Abhi Rajendran that I follow almost religiously. All these fellows identify as climate activist supporters. But the difference between them and many on the forum is they do not live in an echo chamber. They are out in the real world, they deal with business leaders, financial leaders and both government and quasi government officials on a daily basis world wide. They are more informed, more reasonable and practical because of it. If I were some of you guys I would walk back from the climate ledge and get a broader world view as to what can be done and on what time table. If china goes into Taiwan, which I think is less than 50% chance, but that numbers is growing, what is your plan B? that’s the plan should be concerned about.

       1. Kyle Bass interview this morning make of it as you will, he thinks china WILL go into Taiwan.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m04VhV2o918

    2. Mr. Maddoux,
       Pakistan just announced an abrupt 180 degree policy change from LNG to coal – preferentially domestic sourced – for that country’s electricity production.
       Plans call for a quadrupling of current capacity.
       Re China/’Renewables’ (sic) … the brand new, $30 Billion Haoji railway can carry ~200 Million tonnes PER YEAR of coal from the world’s largest open-pit lignite and bituminous mines in Inner Mongolia.
       (Online images are a gut punch).
       As 1 Gigawatt electricity production equates to one large, 1,000 Megawatt power plant, China’s ~40 Gigawatt new coal burners built in 2021 – combined with 2022’s ~30 Gigawatts – are only slightly lagging the one-massive-plant-per-week pace that the additional >200 Gigawatts over the next 4 years will bring online.
       These numbers/facts are irrefutable, as are the stated facts in your post.
       To begin to recognize that profoundly incongruent psychological factors (self harming?) are present in this entire Global Warming/Renewable Energy (sic) narrative should be simply stating the obvious.
       As dispassionate, objective (whatever that crucial term even means anymore) discussion has long ago ‘left the station’, cold hard Reality will manifest, as the Pakistani, Chinese (and even the Germans and Japanese) are now showing.
       Hope you are enjoying the AZ sunshine.

       1. from Abhi Rajendran

          @ARaj_Energy:

          When you demonize gas in the name of climate, you get this

          #Netzero pathways die accordingly
          Stephen Stapczynski

          @SStapczynski
          ·
          19h
          MAJOR SHIFT: Pakistan is abandoning its LNG expansion plans because the fuel is too expensive, and instead will use more coal
          🇵🇰🪨

          🚢”LNG is no longer part of the long-term plan,” Energy Minister told Reuters
          🏭 Pakistan to QUADRUPLE coal power capacity

       2. Thanks, Coffee, I always learn from you.

          I need to learn to be a bit more like Seneca wrote in his letters and just let things be.

          It blows my mind that the so-called world community is beating the drum over EV’s when China and India make the rest of the world look like carbon pikers. China was/is at about 35%.

          The numbers you tallied in your post illustrate the futility of EV’s when the main course is electricity.

          1. coffee is a true gentleman.

    3. Factual info is sometimes useful.
       Here is the Global Energy Consumption trend by source since the turn of this century.
       The numbers on the chart show the average annual change over past 5 years.

       -Coal has been pretty flat for the past 10 years
       -for Oil it looks like the bumpy plateau ( /- 5%) was mounted about 7 years ago
       -So far Natural Gas is still on a very rapid growth phase. [no shortage of fertilizer anytime soon, if you’ve got shipping and credit]
       -Nuclear….flat with a very long lead time for new production. Average age of power plants is 31 years, and 42 years in the US.
       -Hydro. Rapid growth up to 3%/yr expected over the next 10 years, despite the best spots already have been already developed and the ecological damage these big plants do.
       -‘Others’ (wind, solar, geothermal, biofuel) showing explosive but very early growth phase now just beginning.
       [The 16% annual average growth over the past years is accelerating, with global solar generating capacity alone rising 23% in year 2021. By the end of the decade solar and wind global production will be obvious even to the impaired]

       source graph- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption#cite_note-1

       

       1. 2021 in the US Solar and Wind contributed 12% of total utility-scale electricity generation [US EIA]
          yet only a fraction of 1% of the domestic energy reserve of these two modalities has been tapped thus far.

          Limp effort thus far.

17. Hickory and HB, i like the ways you guys think. Let me help you make your list to reduce the use of oil to help it last longer.

    1. make it illegal for the NE part of the US to burn oil to generate electricity. To make up the shortfall in electrical generation, transport all illegal aliens, using electric buses of course, up to the north east and make them pedal peloton bicycles that are hooked up to the electric grid for 10 hours a day 6 days a week.

    2. make it illegal for any government official to fly, drive or ride in any thing that is not powered by electric motors.
    leading by example is the way to win the hearts and minds of the ignorant masses.

    3. make it illegal for all government officials to use any item that is made from oil, in whole or in part, for work or personal use. This would include the direct family members including children and grandchildren. Make it applicable to all blue state and local governments. Red states would be exempted because they supply the oil that the blue states non government citizens can legally use but only between the hours of 9:00 am and 9:30 am.

    4. immediate confiscate and destroy any oil or oil derivative modes of transportation that green activist use, including their diesel burning ships and jet fuel burning planes.

    5. Immediately require all transportation of food and medical supplies into blue states be electrical propelled devises, to include trucks, ships, and trains.

    6. Require the build out of the green energy electric system using only materials that are mined, processed, transported and manufactured using exclusively renewable non nuclear energy non hydro electrical energy.

    7. Optimize travel for all government officials, Hollywood woke actors and green energy executive/activist using only electric vehicles for strict efficiency not convenience and force it.

    Happy to help, together we can make a difference 😂

    1. So…basically nothing useful to say about the topic.

    2. Texas Teat Wo said:

       “make it illegal for all government officials to use any item that is made from oil, in whole or in part, for work or personal use. This would include the direct family members including children and grandchildren. Make it applicable to all blue state and local governments.”

       It’s a deal if no net tax dollars go to red states.

       “What would happen if blue states stopped paying for red states?
       A recent Rockefeller Institute study makes clear how much money flows out of Democratic-leaning states into Republican-leaning ones.”
       https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2021/12/what-would-happen-if-blue-states-stopped-paying-for-red-states/

18. In the meanwhile another 26 millions released from SPR .
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-13/us-to-sell-26-million-more-barrels-from-strategic-crude-reserve?sref=6uww027M&leadSource=uverify%20wall

    1. What’s the reason for this?

       There aren’t any elections right now, perhaps a try to curb inflation by reducing energy prices?

       1. Eulen , I guess ” Old habits die hard ” . or “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein . You decide . ;-0

       2. Eulen , maybe this is the answer .
          “Surplus Energy Economics, Dr. Tim Morgan’s blog, has part 3 in a series explaining “Prosperity” as the economic output remaining after all of the essential needs of sustaining the economy have been met, which is a lot like my “disposable” income after bills, taxes, rent and food. We know that when food, rent and gas prices go up, we are poorer, less prosperous. There are multiple drivers of this. Fuel cost, the “Energy Cost of Energy” is a big one. When gasoline is $6/gallon , everybody feels poorer. The rest of the economy declines, because people have to buy gasoline first. This is pervasive in the economy, but not as apparent. It is why the Biden Administration can sell oil from the strategic petroleum reserve to goose the economy, and its political fortunes, but won’t pay to refill it, which would raise the price of oil/energy and depress the economy.
          “Economics” looks at financial flows, which are assumed to reflect real, physical economy, but fail to actually do that, because they assume that any physical input, like oil, can be substituted-for by some other input, completely dependent upon the monetary price. This has worked in an era where it was possible to drill more oil wells and mine more coal, at a low price, but it does not work when the price of oil can double or triple in a few months, which keeps the economy from growing. These limits of oil supply now appear to be fixed. Saudi Arabia can’t just pump more.
          Economies can only afford to pay so much for energy before they begin contracting as the price exceeds that. The currently prominent economic theory assumes permanent growth, because anything that runs low can be replaced for a price, but we find that the price of oil going above $80/bbl seems to suppress the economy, because what’s left as “prosperity” is needed to fund the non-essential parts of economy, like restaurants, pedicures and vacations. ” . Below is the link
          https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/02/11/248-the-surplus-energy-economy-part-3/

          1. Still releasing at 80$ price tag is not really logically – since this reserve isn’t bottomless.

             Goosing the economy when the oil shoots up to 120$+++ by shock-releasing 50 mb or more is much better – it’s clear that the current 80$ is the new normal necessary to keep the things going.

             And when we steer into an oil production gap, OPEC tapped out and Russia on decline, releasing now isn’t that good. Some more price pressure to let people buy more efficient or smaller cars when buying new ones would be better – and using the reserve to avoid spikes (the 6$ pump shocks).

             But perhaps he tries to suppress oil price until the next election – and then the reserve will down to the slug in the tanks, calling for the rest of the world handling shortages.

    2. When the SPR release was announced the SPR held 564 million barrels of oil. Now it’s down to 371 million barrels and with an additional planned release of 26 million barrels will be down to 345 million barrels, the lowest level since 1983. That’s a decrease of 39%. Will the SPR completely disappear?

       1. Frugal . Matt Simmons said 15-20 % is sludge . His words ” we would have to shovel it out ” . This was when the SPR was about 600- 700 million barrels . Matt died in 2010 . His words about 15 years ago , I presume .

       2. I would suspect that the current administration ( Since it was a success in bringing down oil/gas prices) will go to this well as often as it needs to in order to manipulate this market price. It worked once with no one blinking or resisting and I don’t see how it won’t continue to work until there is nothing left but basic sediment and water.

          The debate and discussion above was interesting but everyone everywhere when possible wants to live a better life which for the most part in the 21rst century is dependent on affordable energy. The private jets parked at the COP, Davos, Super Bowl and the Aspen Airport summer and winter tell me that no one really really cares about climate change and no one really believes in Peak Oil.

          The Petroleum industry should be respected for its continued efforts to improve and enhance technology in order to recover available oil reserves. However we did a pretty poor job as an industry in educating the Public on the nature of it being a finite resource ( in practical terms) . Hence even the President thinks drilling for hydrocarbon is like turning on a light switch and castigated both the KSA and the domestic producers for not producing more and price gouging.

          Art Berman like many in the oil business are right sometimes on their predictions and also dead wrong. However as a producer in the Permian I can only tell you since 2018-19 as we have drilled “Child Wells” the production successively gets worse on an EUR basis and as we drill the tier two it will also keep getting worse.

          Yet the STEO predicts record domestic production. This may occur but more importantly, it will fall off of a cliff and no one outside of this blog will talk about it because it may affect Stock prices negatively, etc …. Instead we will see consolidations and the industry shrinking.

          It will be a sad day when we run out and the US will turn to its coal reserves to live to fight another day.

          By the way, most of the world other than the west gives a rats ass about climate change or green energy. China is planning their future as we dismember ours. It’s tragic.

19. rapier doing what he does best

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-US-Will-Be-Dependent-On-Oil-For-Far-More-Than-A-Decade.html

    1. I agree, the World will be dependent on oil for 3 decades or so, assuming the only transition that occurs is moving land transport to batteries powered by electricity.

       

20. The OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with OPEC production data for January 2023 at OPEC.Org.

    OPEC crude-only production was down 49,000 barrels per day in January after revisions. However December production was revised down 46,000 bpd so January production was actually down 95,000 barrels per day from what was reported for December last month. Biggest loser was Saudi Arabis, down 156,000 barrels per day. The biggest gainer was Nigeria, up 65,000 barrels per day.

    I have posted below the OPEC 13 Yearly Average chart. All points are for the entire year except the last point, which is January 2023 only. January comes in at almost the exact 2022 yearly average. I believe this will very likely be the case for the rest of 2023. OPEC peaked in 2016, just over six years ago.

    OPEC, plus Russia, plus the USA, drive world oil production. OPEC has peaked and will likely hold its current production for some time before starting further decline. Russia says their production will drop by half a million barrels per day next month. They will very likely be down over one million barrels per day by year’s end. That leaves it up to the USA. I seriously doubt they can save the world from peak oil… again.

    

21. The UAE Is Worried About An Oil Supply Shortage In 2024

    Declining oil production in many countries and the potential of insufficient crude supply will be a bigger problem for the oil market next year than how demand will evolve, according to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

    “I’m not worried about demand — what worries us is whether we are going to have enough supplies in the future,” the UAE’s Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday.

    “What worries me is the decline that I see in many countries’ production,” said the top energy official at one of OPEC’s biggest producers and most influential members.

    1. From your link: “What worries me is the decline that I see in many countries’ production,” said the top energy official at one of OPEC’s biggest producers and most influential members.

       The CEO of Aramco has been saying such things for months now. And now the UAE Minister of energy is chiming in with the same message. And no one is paying attention.

       I picked an arbitrary date, May 2018, six months before oil peaked in November 2018, and plotted the decline in all nations that had declining production since that date. The results are in the chart below.

       The chart contains the combined data of 66 countries and is through October 2022.

       

    2. Okay, Dennis will cry, “But that includes Venezuela and Iran, where sanctions are the blame for the decline. Okay, I subtracted Venezuela and Iran from that mix. The chart below is the result. It looks even worse.

       

    3. The idea that OPEC never peaks and always has spare capacity will be proven erroneous. The signs are there for all to see ….

22. OPEC predicts Russian oil production will decline by about 1 million barrels per day in 2023. The below chart is OPEC’s prediction of Russian total liquids in 2023. Subtract about 1 million bp/d to get C+C. The chart comes from the latest OPEC MOMR published today.

    For 2023, Russian liquids production is forecast to drop by 0.9 mb/d to average 10.1 mb/d. Annual growth is revised down by around 50 tb/d from the previous assessment. It should be noted that Russia’s oil forecast remains subject to high uncertainty.

    

    1. Ron, the tone from opec is getting more shrill in the call for more capex. Now I might be wrong, but one interpretation is they are all out of spare capacity and are getting themselves in the place to tell the world, we told you so, the next time the price spikes. Again that’s just reading the tealeaves…time will tell.

       1. Interesting times! Time to get local

23. “Spacing on shale wells that he claimed won’t make significant oil in the US? Or maybe Barnett wells with $3000/month OpX? I was at one of his SIPE talks when he claimed that the first horizontal ever drilled was in the early 80’s. Amusingly, the directional drillers I learned from had been doing them since the 60’s. A history major was Art’s first degree, maybe he just couldn’t be bothered to even learn the history of the oilfield prior to saying silly stuff?”

    Your account is new information for me. There were “slant drillers,” which mainly got into trouble for pulling hydrocarbons out from under another man’s land, dating well back into the 1930’s. But I thought the late George Mitchell started true horizontal drilling into the Barnett Shale in the mid-eighties. I know the first well he did used a gel frack, but he kept refining his techniques. In the early nineties he acquired a grant from the federal government to drill horizontally and fracture a few Barnett wells. That started the “revolution.”

    Greg Zuckerman wrote a pretty good book on this about a decade ago, entitled, “The Frackers.” I recall that he went way back and outlined the history of fracking–which began in the old Hugoton Field (SW Kansas) with the use of gelled gasoline (gas to which benzene had been added). That was later named Napalm and found other uses.

    1. I was drilling horizontals in the late 80’s and 90’s, GOM, Canada, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana. Kicked off horizontals so shallow the BHA was in the slips, and 15000 feet down. Never read the Frackers, I do know that Haliburton patented the process around 1948 or so (presuming we aren’t talking about hydrostatic shock and torpedoing a well, that patent was in 1865), Hubbert referenced the first 100,000 frack jobs happening by 1955-56, and the USGS and EPA, circa 2015 or so, mentioned that 2/3’s of all hydraulic fracturing had occurred in the 20th century. By now, maybe the centuries are equal? I was around multi-stage slickwater hydraulic fracturing in shales in the 80’s, mostly from the production department side though, flowbacks, getting them online after flowbacks, that sort of thing. Back then it was as much CO2 as it was water. Didn’t start running slick water completions personally on shale wells until the mid-90’s.

       George gets credit for gettin’er done at scale though. The transition out of the Barnett, initially developed with vertical wells, exploded into the Fayetteville, Haynesville and Marcellus shortly afterwards. I was up in Elm Coulee in 2006, and even then folks were going after the Bakken with all kinds of interesting horizontal ideas, chicken feet multi-laterals, oh no! longer is better, those other guys didn’t know what they were talking about! it was fun to see the disagreements on what “best” was. Those were the days. Science is just so…lacking…nothing explodes, breaks, freezes, you can’t yell at people for doing dangerous nonsense, no driving out to rigs near the Arctic Circle in winter and the northern lights. But -35F up there is just…brutal. Had no desire to be 60 years old and still climbing to the rig floor. Gave up the field, took a pay cut and got back into an office.

       Article on the beginning of slant holes, it has been going on for awhile as well. https://www.iadc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/preview-dd.pdf

       1. I think you and Gerry are talking past each other.

          Yes there has been fracking for over 70 years.

          Yes there have been horizontal wells drilled for decades before the shale boom.

          But the completion techniques which started the shale boom were the result largely of George Mitchell’s work in the Barnett shale? He sold to Devon in 2002, which determined that horizontal wells were the way to go?
          If that isn’t right, point me in the right direction.

          1. Shallow, most of this shit is about Berman, who like many of us had no idea the level of DEBT the US tight oil industry was willing to get in. So whooptie-do… because of debt, which America loves, we shoved affordable peak oil down the road a decade or so. It is incredible to me how dumb people are to not see that.

             Everybody has got to hate somebody, so they hate Berman. Or, now, a dumb ass roughneck from Flatonia.

             Making predictions about the future is fraught with peril; Berman is no different than others that think they’ve got it all sorted out, and don’t. I’m not sticking up for him but at least he didn’t slink off under a rock.

             The tight oil phenomena was a gift from God. In Texas we drilled tight oil wells on 330 foot spacing; they are now interfering with each other up, sideways and down. We flared, we wasted, 250 BCFG annually, burned it into NOTHING, while recovery rates of tight oil in place were < 8%. It was an engineers play, not a geology play…you could drill a well anywhere in that shit and make a little money. We should have been re-injecting that gas and increasing RR to get us home. Greed took precedence. Engineers did exactly what they were TOLD to do, including lie about EUR's. It was an engineers play, not a geologist play. Please go to the SPE's site, which I am an associate member of, and read their moral obligations to the people of this country to enhance recovery rates and prevent waste.

             At one time America probably DID have enough recoverable tight oil resources to get us to a rational, logical, economical transition to renewables.

             The tight oil sector, and the idiots that regulated it, ruined all that. Imagine being 'proud' of that?

             1. I would go one or two level higher:

                It was a wallstreet game – creating lot’s of high yield bonds in a yield starved low interrest rate enviroment. Creating lot’s of hype and good paying CIO jobs on injecting insurance money into the ground, as far as possible.

                You can even say it’s fault of the Fed, causing the artificially low interrest rates enabling all this.

                The geologist and engineers – play along the rules or be fired. The money rules, and “growth”.

                The public was buying this, because it was an echo to the known old oil industry. When developing a big field, or even a big offshore fields, trucks full of dept is needed before earning money. Only shale is different… I think now the debt bonanza is over, and the hangover starts at some fields.

24. World C plus C output historical data from

    https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world/petroleum-and-other-liquids/monthly-petroleum-and-other-liquids-production?pd=5&p=00000000000000000000000000000000002&u=0&f=M&v=mapbubble&a=-&i=none&vo=value&&t=C&g=none&l=249–249&s=94694400000&e=1664582400000

    The peak centered 12 month average was August 2018 at 83008 kb/d, monthly output in October 2022 was 81789 kb/d. Also note that the annual rate of increase in World C plus C output from June 2020 to Oct 2022 was 4323 kb/d. Obviously that annual rate of increase won’t continue in the future, though we might see about a 700 kb/d annual rate of increase in World C plus C output for the next few years (2023 to 2028).

    

    1. Is your guess/estimate/projection that World C+C has the potential to stay above 80,000 kb/d until 2028, or several years beyond?
       Thank you Dennis

       1. Hickory,

          A recent guess by me. Output falls below 80 Mb/d in 2033 in the scenario shown.

          

          1. Thank you Dennis.
             That gives a lot of time to make adjustments.
             And I’m sure that people will jump and shout and say that it is too optimistic,
             but regardless of the specific details…its likely to be a fat tail.
             I note that you have used a conservative URR of 2460, which is far below others estimates based on geologic estimates alone, and I applaud that.

             1. Thanks Hickory.

                Note that I believe there is a 100% probability that my estimate of the future will be incorrect.

                1. Hickory,

                   My apologies, I mislabelled my chart, the URR of World C plus C is 2800 Gb for the scenario I presented earlier in the comment above.

    2. …we might see about a 700 kb/d annual rate of increase in World C plus C output for the next few years (2023 to 2028).

       Perhaps, but I think the CEO of Aramco and the UAE Minister of Energy would disagree with that assessment.

       Over a year ago, I pointed out that the production decliners are overtaking the production gainers. Now the big guns of OPEC are agreeing with me. I mean….. nothing could be more obvious.

       October 2022 was 81789 kb/d.

       Since October 2022, OPEC crude-only production has declined about 700,000 barrels per day. Non-OPEC production is likely down about half that amount. OPEC says Russian production will decline by 900,000 barrels per day next year. It’s over, and the permanent decline in oil production has started. Though there will be months of increased production, they will never keep up with the decline. The decline will continue… forever.

       1. Ron,

          For most months since June 2020 the increases from increasing oil producing nations have more than offset decreases from declining nations. This is likely to continue until 2028 or so in my opinion. Time will tell which of us is correct.

          Also OPEC has chosen to cut output as they believe the World market is oversupplied. That is the reason OPEC output has fallen by 700 kb/d since October 2022.

          1. Yes, of course, that has been the case since June of 2020. But Dennis, you must realize all that gain was recovery from the deep covid cuts. I am more than a little shocked that you did not realize that. But full recovery happened about a year or more ago, more or less depending on the country.

             The fact that many nations are totally unable to fully recover to their pre-covid level should tell you something. And that pre-covid level is, in most cases, well below the November 2018 peak.

             About those OPEC cuts, OPEC is capable, as they have shown several times in the past, capable of producing well above their medium to long-term level to prepare for quotas. Right now, OPEC is producing flat out, or very nearly so.

             1. Ron I agree OPEC is producing close to flat out, maybe about 700 kb/d less than that level as of Jan 2023. The World is currently adequately supplies with oil, that’s why oil prices are in the $80/b range of late. OPEC may be able to increase their capacity in the future, if they believe there is a need for increased capacity. If the World becomes undersupplied with oil and the price of oil remains above $100/bo for a year or more we may see an increase in output as many projects that have been deferred will be come viable. We will see over the next few years.

                1. We will see over the next few years.

                   Dennis, peak oil is now four years, three months in the past. Just how many more years before “we will see?”

                2. Ron,

                   Yes the current peak is August 2018 for the centered 12 month average. about 4.5 years in the past. As is the past when there have been temporary peaks in output, a new peak was reached in the future. My current best guess has the 2018 peak being surpassed in 2026 with a final peak in 2028 at 83.8 Mb/d.

                3. Dennis, I finally understand where you are coming from. You look at past trends. You see a peak, then a decline, then another peak that is higher than the previous one. So the future will look like the past. Each peak will be surpassed by another higher peak. Just like it has always happened in the past.

                   What you fail to understand is that every year, a few nations would peak, but there were always enough nations that had not peaked that their production overcame the declining nations. But the number of decliners increased in number each year. Now the decliners, and their production, is greater than those who still have more oil to produce. It had to happen. And it has happened.

25. There is no doubt that greed ran the shale basins, and that crowded spacing and inattention to reservoir pressure resulted in deterioration. The shale oil diorama has not been pretty to watch.

    In full transparency (since this is getting heated), I take working interests in conventional vertical wells where the geology excites me and when I am satisfied that the people running the show are reliable. In the tight oil & gas world I stick with minerals. I am not a whale investor, but if there is any poor sucker with more skin in the game, let him say so. I’ve made some glaring mistakes but sometimes, as they say, even a blind pig will find a truffle. I have spread out over five states in the hope that there will always be a truffle. I avoided the Delaware sub-basin simply because the truffles were overpriced.

    So after all this time in the confession booth, crying and carrying on, here’s my question: Is it too late to begin widespread reclamation of these low-pressure end-of-life wells? My question is not entirely for the betterment of mankind, as I am a small percentage owner in a goodly number of those depleted wells of yesteryear, whereby 8% was retrieved, a little money was made, but most of the oil was left in the ground. The reinjection of field gas to hold the reservoir pressure is working well in both the Bakken and the Niobrara-Codel. I see no reason why it should not work in any shale basin.

26. KSA has a shortfall of 156000 barrels in January production . Many here (me included ) have long maintained that KSA has peaked . Have a queasy feeling that they are fudging numbers by (1) re exporting or using Russian oil for their operations (2) they are using oil from inventory . Anybody got figures on their inventory ?
    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/OPECs-Oil-Production-Drops-In-January-As-Saudi-Arabia-Cuts-Output.html

    1. I don’t know, they are 100 kbd below their quota.

       It can be financial games. They produce 1% less then they are allowed – but perhaps they think this stabilizes the oil price by 2%. Then they would make money with it. Supply / demand is still very tight, so small changes can move the price.

       1. Eulen , reasonable explanation .

    2. HIH

       I am on holidays and don’t have access to my files. I posted this about three weeks ago.

       https://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/752202-1.gif

       1. Ovi’s chart referred to above.

          

27. My response to you Mike is the feeling is mutual, I have zero respect for your ideas. You seem to believe the only people who should be allowed to develop their minerals and sell their products are those who use technology developed in the 1940’s and 1950’s. That is insane.

    Never mind that you now have the Democrats President begging us to now produce more. Never mind all the jobs we produce the lives we make better.

    https://www.worldoil.com/news/2023/2/14/permian-strategic-partnership-oil-and-gas-has-a-positive-impact-on-communities-across-permian-basin/

    You are the Colin Kappernick of the industry, you take a knee, sit on the sidelines and proudly throw stones at your industry. Further more the only people who quote you are the anti energy crowd, you seem to be happy playing the role of useful idiot for their cause. My last word on the subject.

    1. I was a conservative Republican before you learned to masterbate, worm.

       Useful idiot?

       Attaboy.

       1. Worm!! Boy, I’ve been out of the oil field too long, hadn’t heard that one in ages.

28. I think it’s time to consider whether folks who flood the message boards with cornucopian drivel like TexasTeaTwo and who offer no opportunity to verify they are real people are more likely than not chatbots created to stifle the opinions of freethinking dissenters. It’s easy to imagine someone in a large bureaucracy such as Exxon paying someone to find the last refuges of dissenting opinion such as this message board and squash them with massive quantities of establishmentarian tirades that add nothing to the general discussion.

29. How much does Russian oil really cost inspite of price capa . Good analysis .
    https://re-russia.net/en/expertise/049/

30. Information .

    

31. POB was referenced on Ugo Bardi’s blog this week: https://www.senecaeffect.com

    “The American elites understand what’s happening. Hence, the effort to prop up the oil industry at all costs. So, will the Empire succeed in surviving for some more years? The current war is not being fought on the battlefield but on the oil fields. The side that runs out of fuel first will be the loser.

    “In the long run, anyway, the winner will also lose: at some moment, production by fracking will not just decline: it will crash in one of the most brutal Seneca Cliffs ever witnessed by humankind. But do not despair: humankind has been thriving before the age of oil, and it may well do the same afterward. It will just be a very different world for those who will survive to see it.”

    1. A bracing article but I don’t know what to believe anymore. The Bronze Age collapsed so fast, by the time the Torah was written out had been forgotten about.

       1. “…it all had been forgotten about.”

       2. Bardi turns out to be a fruitcake:

          I don’t have to tell you that all the assumptions at the basis of these ideas turned out to be wildly off the mark. The pandemic was much less deadly than the models said it would be. The “flattening of the curve” just didn’t happen despite the measures lasting more than two years instead of two weeks. “Covid zero” turned out to be not just a dream but a nightmare. Finally, the measures were far from harmless (for instance face masks positively harm health).

          1. I worked in ICU for the better part of 2 decades; 12 hour shifts, 14 or 15 days a month minimum; wore all sorts of masks for several hours every shift.
             I also spent a lot of time managing some health and safety; workers in 3M 1/2 masks and P100 filters for hours at a time while participating in strenuous labor. Anyone who thinks masks cause problems needs to present a data set.
             If wearing masks had negative health implications we’d know.

             1. I won’t be reading Bardi ever again. There are enough smart people in the peak oil awareness crowd that I won’t be missing anything.

                1. Too bad that Bardi doesn’t understand game theory with respect to models of human behavior. Plus any early models were automatically wrong since a vaccine was created quickly.

    2. George

       Thanks for reporting that. Good to know that Ugo checks POB for updates.

32. google shells lng outlook for a whooping demand increase forecast i can’t seem to post it

    here is an article with a link

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Shell-European-Demand-Is-Set-To-Dominate-LNG-Trade-In-The-Long-Term.html

    1. I guess blowing things up really increases demand for substitutes.

33. “There will be plenty of oil in the world for critical uses for a long time” [quote- me/now]

    Debate points
    -it depends how you define ‘critical’
    -it depends on how you define ‘long time’, or on the flip side it depends on the rate of depletion. Gradual decline- say 2 %/year- is certainly less shocking than a steeper cliff decline.
    -it may be true on a global basis, but unequal distribution of oil products between countries and within countries will be extremely disruptive, and countries will be at risk from energy related warfare and from internal failure/loss of civil stability. We have seen episodes of this story before, but have generally been able to drill out of the situation enough to stabilize things for most people (not so much for others). Not this time.

    Take note that the global output of C C as depicted by Dennis [up-thread] does show a steep decline from 2030 to 2050 of roughly 33%. Could start earlier, or be more steep….sure. Regardless of the details the implications are sharp.

    Comment- it would be wise to assume a 2-3%/yr decline in oil available for purchase to beginning ________ [fill in the blank with a number between 2023 and 2033].
    How will you and your country handle that?
    Will restrictions of oil use be simply at the market price level allowing the wealthy to continue on with optional use while the vast majority cannot afford critical usage?
    Will a simple market pricing mechanism be effective at shunting oil product to critical industries, or will government intervention be required?
    Will government work to make restrictions uniform through mechanisms of mandates/rationing/penalties?

    Lastly, I’ll point out that other energy sources will be more heavily relied upon to fill any purposes that substitution can effectively be used for…such as in transportation or industry. Coal, NG and NGL’s/wood/perpetuals,etc.

    1. What is the derivative of crude oil to that is hardest to adjust to shortage of supply of in the next couple decades?
       I’m in the big camp of those who say diesel is the tough one.
       Anyone else have a different take on this?

       1. Hickory
          Diesel will be tough, But ICE’s can be reconfigured to run on any hydrocarbon from methane to raw crude oil. My own experience includes running forklifts and farm tractors on propane instead of gasoline – much lower maintenance costs and much longer engine life. If Dennis is correct about electric vehicle uptake, then a significant price differential will develop between gasoline and diesel and ICE fuel adaptation will cushion the pressure on diesel. We even had an old tractor on the farm that had two fuel tanks, one diesel and one gasoline and it would run on either provided you started and stopped on gasoline.
          Asphalt might also be a candidate, roofing, roads, structure waterproofing are all pretty large and relatively unforgiving demands.

          1. Yes, when younger I worked around propane forklifts.

             As oil runs down things won’t stay the same.
             The mantra of the century.

          2. Old chemist. I had an old tractor too a grey Ferguson. Two tanks one for petrol the other for TVO (Tractor vaporising oil).

       2. My first post to this forum so I had best set out my experience. I am a petroeum chemist and have worked in oil E&P (mud logger/ chemist), oil refining and petrochemicals. I work for a large German chemical producer as a Feedstock and Petrochemicals Technologies Manager. I have been in the business for 44 years and am busy looking at the size and shape of the refining business going forward in what is a crazy world. I have been musing about Peak Oil for over two decades. I do not predict when it will happen but one day it will happen and we will only realise when we look in the rear view mirror. When it happens there will be a slow transition. There will still be oil and gas but we had better get used to using it wisely.
          In terms of difficulty of substitution there is no easy answer. Jet fuel will be the most challenging. The main substitite currently available and proven is HVO SAF (hydrogenated vegetable oil – sustainable aviation fuel) SAF is a bit of a misnomer- I do not believe in the S but that is purely my opinion. Synthetic routes are limited. Fischer Tropsch chemistry can make both Jet and Diesel. FT jet is limited to 50% of the fuel volume because of lubrication issues. However the number of FT plants globally is small <10, and the biggest is in Qatar with a capacity of 7.5 million tonnes per annum or 150 kb/d. Thoeretically FT can run on just about anything – gas, oil, coal, biomass, MSW. In practice only gas is used- even in South Africa. Attempts with biomass gasification have not been successful ( see Choren). MSW is even more challenging.
          Diesel also poses some challenges. The bulk of diesel production is from atmospheric distillation and some smaller volumes are produced from hydrocracking, fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) and coking, depending on the refinery configuration. Unlike gasoline production the middle distillates (jet and diesel) are not readily synthesised from smaller molecules. Techniques exist but are highly uneconomic ( FT and oligomerisation). The volumes of gasoline, jet and diesel consumed are staggering:

          Gasoline 25.5 million b/d (3 million tonnes)
          Jet 7.9 million b/d (1 million tonnes)
          Diesel 28.1 million b/d (3.7 million tonnes)

          Data from JODI 2019 and rounded

          Vegetable oils are used in the production of biodiesel (ghastly product), renewable diesel ( good product) and SAF. The snag is that the total production of vegetable oils ( soya, rape/canola. palm and others) amount to a little over 200 million tonnes per annum , much of which is weather and fertiliser dependent. Go and look at the price of the main 3 vegetable oil and you will see a massive premium over diesel and jet. There is now a rush to build HVO units in so called bio-refineries. Notwithstaning the petchems business is also eyeing HVO for feedstocks. Something has got to give because there will be only a limited supply of veg oils and expansion is not really a solution (food vs fuel) . The weakest link is biodiesel and I see these producers being squeezed out. Suffice to say that no oil majors invested in biodiesel – they kept well away and focused on HVO which integrates better in a refinery and has no practical limits on its use, unlike biodiesel.
          Both the US and EU have big plans for aviation. Somehow the aviation industry is going to be powered by renewable fuels by 2050- I say good luck. because legislation does not guarantee supply. There is all sorts of garbage written about hydrogen and carbon dioxide. It might work at lab scale but will never scale up and be affordable. Have a read up on the history of cellulosic ethanol- more than a 100 years of effort, huge wads of cash and it still does not work and never will do.

          All processes, without exception are governed by 3 laws- The Laws of Thermodynamics. The second law states- Entropy always increases. That applies to oil production as well. The wise people on this blog will have heard of EROI and EROEI or net energy gain. EROEI is like swimming in a tide. EROEI will govern our future energy supplies, and even the amount of oil and gas that is recovered.

          When I look at new technologies I always apply the principle- "if it is any good why are we not using it". This particularly applies to the refining and petchem industry. We produce olefines in steam crackers because after 70 years there is no better technology. FT plants are limited because they consume a hell of a lot of energy and are very complicated, and uneconomic. "Biofuels" are only viable because of stupid mandates that raises the price of gasoline and diesel to the consumer.

          1. 👍

          2. Thank you for the information Carnot.
             Very useful.

             I’ll restate the idea that the vast majority of aviation could be phased out quickly without
             losing civilization.
             ‘Green’ aviation is an attempt by people/industry to psychologically bargain for a future were things don’t change much, despite oil depletion. Its a thermodynamic and environmental losing proposition.

          3. Carnot , first post on the forum and you hit the ball out of the park . Illuminating on the intricasies . Thanks and keep engaged .

34. its almost has someone is reading my post here on peak oil. glad to be first but happier to be accurate.

    https://oilprice.com/Metals/Commodities/Rising-Metal-And-Mineral-Prices-Could-Derail-The-Energy-Transition.html

35. Aside from aviation fuel, there isn’t much that oil can do that can’t be done by natural gas. After the shale oil is long gone, there will still be shale gas–both as end-of-life high GOR’s as pressures fall below the bubble point in gassy oil wells and from dry gas reservoirs.

    LNG is actually a better feedstock for petrochemicals than oil. Diesel tractors can go to CNG readily. There will likely be an inflection point, whereby NG supersedes oil.

    There will soon come the day when the question should be asked if anyone should be using plain pipeline NG, as it comes up with all sorts of impurities that are removed by an LNG train. LNG in abundance on longterm contracts was offered to Germany, only to be declined in favor of very dirty pipeline gas from Russia. At the time, the cost differential wasn’t that great. Now it is.

    I will make the point again: unless China, India, Pakistan, and many other countries adhere to a lower carbon footprint by banning the burning of bituminous coal in power plants, any efforts toward electrification of transport vehicles is like pissing in the ocean. It won’t change the pH.

    1. You mentioned aviation fuel.
       I’d wager that civilization could easily survive on 95% less aviation fuel.
       Its pretty much all optional. Is aerial warfare an optional activity of civilization, or mandatory?
       I think that emergency services air operations are the most important.

    2. “unless China, India, Pakistan, and many other countries adhere to a lower carbon footprint by banning the burning of bituminous coal in power plants”

       That would be good, but consider a different perspective
       The per capita CO2 emissions of the US is more than twice that of China, and more than 7 times greater than India. And Pakistan almost 20 times less/person.

       Its kind of like a massively obese person telling 7 thin people that they need to eat less because combined they eat twice as much as he.

    3. “LNG is actually a better feedstock for petrochemicals than oil”

       You might want to reconsider this statement. Why would you use LNG. No point whatsoever as it would have to be regassed. Methane is only used for methanol and ammonia, which only have a limited application in petchems or as fuel gas. The ethylene market is 180 mta and growing about 3% per annum. The main feedstock is naphtha, though in the US ethane is mainly used. The propylene market is a little smaller but still large and most is produced by steam cracking, FCC’s in refineries and a few propane dehydro plants. The aromatics (BTX) are generally produced from naphtha reforming and steam cracking of naphtha.

       Many attempts have been made to produce olefines from natual gas but have not come to much. China has a number of methanol to olefines plants but most are not economic, especially the coastal plants that run on import methanol.

       1. Yes,

          It is an inaccurate statement. Processed rich gas have pretty good petrochemical potential. It will give refining streams that can be used for petrochemicals. I doubt that Shell would ever do the Pearl gas to liquid project (online in 2011) if it was not possible to use rich gas from North Dome as the source. (https://www.shell.com/about-us/major-projects/pearl-gtl/the-world-s-largest-gas-to-liquids-plant.html).

          Condensate is an excellent feedstock for petrochemicals, and also the advanced cracking refineries as you state. So I guess that the gist of the statement is true, that given the tight oil/gas developments along with some of the gas fields being rich (meaning bordering condensate, but not enough to be easily liquid) are increasing in volume – petrochemical feedstocks will not be in shortage anytime soon. But LNG, being processed methane, does not really do anything for the petrochemical industry. If you come to think of it, cooling something below -163 degrees must predominatly (but not necessarily 100%) be a processed of a rather unified substance (methane).

       2. Thanks for clarifying that. I appreciate it.

          I’m glad you’re posting. You have a lot to add.

36. more evidence we need less sharp knives making policy decisions;

    From Javier Blas

    @JavierBlas

    With great fanfare, the world agreed at the #COP26 climate change summit in 2021 to “phase-out […] inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”

    A year later, spending in fossil fuel consumption subsidies climbed to a record high of more than $1 trillion, according to new
    @IEA
    estimates

37. The North Dakota/Bakken oil production data is out with production data for December 2022.

    ND Monthly Oil Production Statistics

    Oil production in North Dakota declined by 143,102 barrels per day in December to 956,288 barrels per day. This was due to a blizzard they had just before Christmas that hampered production the last two weeks in December. There is likely to be some hangover from this blizzard into January.

    At any rate, it is obvious from the 12-month average decline line that North Dakota is in decline.

    -142,102

    

38. Bakken down from 1,500,000 barrels/day in 2019 to 1,100,000 barrels/day in 2022. That’s a decline of 27% in just three years.

39. there has been some comment here on the quality of oil coming out of west texas. some addition color on the subject.

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Influence-On-Global-Oil-Prices-Is-Growing.html

    “The light, sweet Texas crude appears to be well-liked by refiners. “The European refinery market loves that stuff. The Chinese refinery market loves that stuff,” the head of market reporting and trading solutions at S&P Global Commodity Insights told the Wall Street Journal.”

40. more on the increase demand for lng;

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Indias-Largest-Natural-Gas-Company-Seeks-Stake-In-US-LNG-Project.html

    most objective climate activist would consider this to be a positive step

41. It’s interesting that Shellman and Berman get so much push back on this blog for simply stating their observations. For all we know the pseudonyms might just be bots. There are economic reasons to deny observations if they’re inconvenient to ones particular employment. King Hubert receive the same censure for his observations.

    The bottom line is all mines are eventually shut in. It doesn’t matter how much technology you pour at them they are always closed when they’re no longer economically viable. Some might argue that shale was never economically viable and rightly so it was more about creative accounting, low interest, and a desperate need for yields on Wall Street. But it’s to be expected at the end of life to make desperate choices.

    I think we agree that in many ways oil is the life blood of the global economy. And as demonstrated here it’s bleeding out in nearly every conventional play. Just like a patient that is bleeding out you can apply volume expanders like saline to keep the volume up but you can’t prevent anemia. That’s what the tight oil play’s and NGLs have done. They’ve expanded the volume but are less energy dense and what do we observe an anemic global economy propped up by a mountain of debt that has little to no chance of ever being repaid.

    Peak Oil was never about volume it was always about peak economic activity and physical growth. That’s behind us at least from my observations maybe the 30 somethings living with mom and dad have a different opinion.

    1. You hit the nail squarely ion the head.

       Peak oil is all about EROI, and that will determine future economic activity.

       1. EROI is only one factor, and not the biggest. Yes, it needs to be positive, but that’s all.

          For example a cheap dirty source of electricity here is brown coal. 10% of the electricity output of the attached power plants is directly used to mine the stuff, so EROI is under 10 from that alone not counting other raw materials. But you don’t need a huge staff of people, so it’s cheap.

          The key here is efficiency – one worker controlling a conveyor belt that needs 1 MW (and does according a lot of work), or one worker driving a truck needing 50 KW in average to transport stuff to fracking sites. Economy of scale.

          I don’t like brown coal, it’s only taken as real world example of low EROI and high output.

    2. An year or two ago someone commented on how the world was ignoring the quality mix of the oil production . His POV was that refineries use not one type of oil but a blend of oils . Further he opined that the problem will arise for the refineries as we run out of sour crude available for blending . I put this question to Mike S and received his response .
       https://www.oilystuffblog.com/forumstuff/forum-stuff/ask-questions-get-answers?origin=notification
       P.S : The commentator said that KSA was the largest producer of sour crude and they were increasingly witholding it for their own refiniries in KSA and wherever they had financial interests .

42. Chris Martenson on the coming decline of Europe due to lack of cheap Russian energy .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdoCBPhUdAk

    1. HIH,

       I watched this. The thought that came to mind is if a few (countries) can blackmail the many regarding energy. It can backfire really quickly. One being a war to compete for resources. The largest oil exporters like in your post before (KSA) value stability. And I can certainly attest for Norway, that it is not really seen as any source of good that Norway is “war profitering” from high oil/gas prices – while the rest of Europe is suffering. That means that Norway must give more to other countries to keep some sort of moral balance. The other aspect is that easily transportable energy as oil always finds a market. Natural gas less efficient and a more complex market.

       1. Kolbeinih , Norway can only give what it has and no more . It’s oil supply has already peaked . As to gas , you have correctly said “Natural gas less efficient and a more complex market ” . The new problem for Norway now is that it has setup itself for Russian retaliation being associated with NS2 blowup . Again ” One being a war to compete for resources ” , Correct again .

43. New posts up

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-february-17-2023/

    and

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/predicting-stratospheric-winds/

    The second post replaces the usual Open Thread Non-Petroleum.

44. The relationship between money debt and energy is an interesting one.
    Money essentially is borrowed into existence in a central bank fractional reserve system by commercial banks. Either through commercial loans or bond purchases. Debt therefore is a requirement of the system in order for it to grow. Growth is absolutely essential to the system so that debt can be repaid with interest. So the money supply must grow by persistent debt growth which corresponds to inflation growth in that more dollars are made available. If energy growth can match debt growth the system remains in balance because the growth of things absorbs the money growth. So basically people can buy more stuff because the cost of production remains low.

    These forces play a balancing act if money creation exceeds energy growth the price of goods and services goes up. That’s inflation. The central bank’s have learned that increasing interest removes money from the system and prices stabilize. But what they don’t understand is that the stability is from allowing time for the energy sector to catch-up. When it does over production drive prices down and the cycle starts again. But this only works as long as you can grow your net energy supply.

    Once net energy has peaked things act very differently. The rising cost of energy which affects all goods and services is interpreted as inflation which signals an over supply of money but it’s not. Basically there are fewer things to buy. The shortages in real goods and services are driving prices up which in normal times would increase production but not now. And you can see it happening. In almost every industrial sector there are delays cost overruns and shortages. Raising interest rates are not working prices remain stubbornly high.

    That having been said increasing interest rates will decrease the money supply. This makes it more difficult to repay debt with interest. People pay off there loans if possible or don’t take new loans. When we pay off our debt it destroys money because it removes it from the bank asset ledger or anyone who’s holding that debt as an asset.

    The real risk is a feedback loop the economy of scale is collapsing. So efficiencies are being lost making things more expensive and less affordable to people who have less access to money.

    1. Very good explanation!
       Thanks!

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