An Empirical Model For Oil Prices and Some Implications

D Coyne 338 Comments

This is a guest post by Ian Schindler (Schinzy).

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

Introduction

This work is preliminary. It is a preview of part of a paper I am writing with Aude Illig. There are three main reasons I am making this post. The first is as a public service. There are many people reading this blog who are directly affected by oil prices and who have to make decisions based on future oil prices. Having a model to understand the dynamics of oil prices is of use to them. The second reason is that some people reading this blog model oil extraction. These models either omit price considerations or make assumptions on them. Our model is a large improvement on these assumptions so it should improve their extraction models. The final reason is that I consider the quality of the comments on this blog to be high. I believe that the feedback I get from this post will improve the quality of the final paper. Indeed, Dennis Coyne has already provided valuable feedback after previewing the post. This study has been a humbling experience. Get ready to throw out everything you thought you knew about oil prices.

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OPEC Declines in February Despite Huge Iran Increase

Ron Patterson 366 Comments

All charts are through February 2016

The OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report just came out. The charts are “Crude Only” production and do not reflect condensate production.

Also the charts, except for Libya, are not zero based. I chose to amplify the change rather than the total. OPEC is now 13 nations with the the addition of Indonesia.

All Data is in thousand barrels per day.

OPEC 13

OPEC production was down 174,800 barrels per day in February Read More

Coal Shock Model

D Coyne 380 Comments

This is a guest post by Dennis Coyne.

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

blog1603/

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

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

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

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

Ron Patterson 464 Comments

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

Bh Historical

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

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