Oil Production Is Going To Drop And Oil Prices Are Likely To Increase

Ron Patterson 278 Comments

Rystad Energy, an independent oil and gas consulting services and business intelligence data firm in Oslo, Norway, has online, a wealth of information concerning upstream oil production projects and costs. Some of it is a bit dated but some of their charts date from late 2015.

The two below Rystad charts were published by CNN Money on November 23, 2015.

Costs, Overall

This is overall or average cost, not marginal cost. It cost Canada $41 to produce a barrel of oil but only cost Russia $17.20. I guess that is why Canada is cutting back but Russia is not.

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The IEA’s Oil Production Predictions for 2016

Ron Patterson 246 Comments

The IEA Oil Market Report, full issue, is now available to the public. Some interesting observations:

Non-OPEC oil supplies are nevertheless seen sharply lower in December. Overall supplies are estimated to have slipped by more than 0.6 mb/d from the month prior, to 57.4 mb/d. A seasonal decline in biofuel production, largely due to the Brazilian sugar cane harvest, of nearly 0.4 mb/d was the largest contributor to December’s drop. Production in Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and the US was also seen easing from both November’s level and compared with a year earlier. Persistently low production in Mexico and Yemen were other contributors to the year-on-year decline.

As such, total non-OPEC liquids output slipped below the year earlier level for the first time since September 2012. A production surge in December 2014 inflates the annual decline rate, but the drop is nevertheless significant should these estimates be confirmed by firm data. Already in November, growth in non-OPEC supply had slipped to 640 kb/d, from as much as 2.9 mb/d at the end of 2014, and 2.4 mb/d for 2014 as a whole. For 2015, supplies look likely to post an increase of 1.4 mb/d for the year, before contracting by nearly 0.6 mb/d in 2016. A prolonged period of oil at sub-$30/bbl puts additional volumes at risk of shut in as realised prices fall close to operating costs for some producers.

IEA Forecast 2

The IEA has every month of 2016 Non-OPEC production below the year over year 2015 production.

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Collapse Of Shale Gas Production Has Begun

Ron Patterson 394 Comments

This is a guest post by Steve St. Angelo of SRSroccoReport.Com. All opinions expressed in this post are his and do not necessarily reflect those of Ron Patterson.

The U.S. Empire is in serious trouble as the collapse of its domestic shale gas production has begun.  This is just another nail in a series of nails that have been driven into the U.S. Empire coffin.

Unfortunately, most investors don’t pay attention to what is taking place in the U.S. Energy Industry.  Without energy, the U.S. economy would grind to a halt.  All the trillions of Dollars in financial assets mean nothing without oil, natural gas or coal.  Energy drives the economy and finance steers it.  As I stated several times before, the financial industry is driving us over the cliff.

The Great U.S. Shale Gas Boom Is Likely Over For Good

Very few Americans noticed that the top four shale gas fields combined production peaked back in July 2015.  Total shale gas production from the Barnett, Eagle Ford, Haynesville and Marcellus peaked at 27.9 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in July and fell to 26.7 Bcf/d by December 2015:

Steve 1

As we can see from the chart, the Barnett and Haynesville peaked four years ago at the end of 2011.  Here are the production profiles for each shale gas field:

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Is Non-OPEC Beginning Serious Decline?

Ron Patterson 397 Comments

The EIA’s Monthly Energy Review just came out. They have the U.S. production numbers through December along with World, OPEC C+C, Non-OPEC and selected Non-OPEC nations through October. All EIA data is in thousand barrels per day.

Notice: When I use the term “peaked” below, I am referring to the most recent peak, not the all time peak and not necessarily the final peak. 

USA

United States C+C production peaked in April at 9,694,000 bpd and has dropped half a million barrels per day by December to 9,191,000 bpd.

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A Closer Look at OPEC

Ron Patterson 361 Comments

Taking a closer look at OPEC. All OPEC and price data below is through December. All production data is in thousand barrels per day.

Iran and Libya have had serious political disruptions in their production numbers. Simply adding them to the OPEC numbers distorts the picture. To try to figure out what has been happening to OPEC we need to look at OPEC without Iran and Libya.

OPEC Less Iran and Libya

Here is OPEC less Iran and Libya, or the OPEC 10 if you will. I have marked August 2012 as what I call the “Price Peak”. Not the peak in oil prices but the production peak that was brought about by the increase in the price of oil. That price increase began in early 2009 and by March 2011 was well above $100 a barrel. And the price of oil did not drop below $100 a barrel until late August 2014.

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