Peak Oil Barrel – Page 192 – The Reported Death of Peak Oil Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

OPEC Crude Oil Production, What’s Next?

01/23/201501/23/2015 Ron Patterson 337 Comments

The latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with OPEC production data for. The data is “Crude Only” and does not reflect condensate production.

Also the charts, except for Libya, are not zero based. I chose to amplify the change rather than the total.

All Data is in thousand barrels per day with the last data point December 2014.

OPEC 12 production has averaged slightly above or below 30 million barrels per day for about two years now and there is little chance it will go anywhere very fast. But what is obvious from the above chart is there has been no surge in OPEC oil production. OPEC’s December production f 30,204,000 barrels per day is still more than 1.4 million barrels per day below the peaks of 2008 and 2012.

Algeria is struggling to keep production relatively flat.

Angola is holding its own… so far.

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Texas RRC oil and Gas Production Data

01/20/201501/20/2015 Ron Patterson 514 Comments

The Texas Railroad Comission has released their oil and gas production data for November. As most of you know, the Texas RRC data is always incomplete. Some data is updated immediately but the rest trickles in slowly, sometimes taking many months to years to complete. Nevertheless we can glean some indication of what is happening from what data is reported. That is, if production is increasing, then the incomplete month to month data should be increasing. And it is, but very slowly.

The last data point in all charts below is November 2014 and the oil is in barrels per day.

Texas crude only is still increasing but the increase rate seems to be slowing down.

It is rather hard to tell what condensate is doing but the rate if increase, if any, seems to be slowing.

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Are Mountrail’s Sweet Spots Past Their Prime?

01/17/201501/17/2015 Ron Patterson 288 Comments

This is a Guest Post by Rune Likvern Fractional Flow

This post is an update on total Light Tight Oil (LTO) extraction from Bakken in North Dakota based upon actual data as of October 2014 from North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC). It further presents a statistical analysis on developments of well productivity with a detailed look at developments in Parshall, Reunion Bay and Sanish.

There were general improvements in LTO well productivity in Bakken during 2013.
Present trends in LTO well productivity for Mountrail’s sweet spots (Alger, Parshall, Reunion Bay, Sanish and Van Hook) suggests these are past their prime.
Figure 29 in this post show development in well productivity for Alger and Van Hook and figures 06, 08 and 10 for Parshall, Reunion Bay and Sanish. A common feature for Parshall, Reunion Bay, Sanish, and Van Hook is that these reached new highs in well productivity for wells started in 2013.
Alger has been in general decline since 2011.
LTO extraction in recent years may be viewed as a source for global swing production for oil.

NOTE: Actual data used for this analysis are all from North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC). Data are incomplete for around 2% of the wells.

For wells on confidential list, data on runs were used as proxies for extraction.

Production data for Bakken, North Dakota: Monthly Production Report Index

Formation data from: Bakken Horizontal Wells By Producing Zone

The important messages from this analysis are the trends in well productivity.

This post is an update and expansion of my post “Will the Bakken “Red Queen” Have to Run Faster?” from the summer of 2013 and may be read as a continuation of my post “Will the Bakken Red Queen Outrun Growth in Water Cut?”.

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Bakken LTO Production, November Data

01/14/201501/16/2015 Ron Patterson 340 Comments

The North Dakota Industrial Commission is out with the Bakken November Production Data and the North Dakota Production Data.

Bakken production was up 5,293 BP/D while total North Dakota was up 3,691 BP/D. Total North Dakota oil production is up 901 barrels per day from two months ago, October production.

Total wells producing was up by 110 in the Bakken but only up by 63 in North Dakota. That means a lot of conventional wells were shut down.

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Short-Term Energy Outlook 2015 and 2016

01/13/201501/13/2015 Ron Patterson 153 Comments

The EIA has just released their Short-Term Energy Outlook for January. They have now included their predictions for 2016. Here is what they expect for US C+C. I have made the first projected production for December 2014 though the EIA says they have production data for December. All date is in million barrels per day through December 2016.

The EIA is saying that US C+C will peak at 9.47 mb/d in May 2015, drop 330,000 barrels per day by September 2015 then recovers, apparently because the price of oil goes back. Or perhaps they have another reason. They do not have US production surpassing May 2015 until July of 2016.

The EIA only gives C+C outlook numbers for domestic production. However they do project total liquids for all Non-OPEC nations. But first here is what they are predicting for US total liquids:

The EIA has US total liquids hitting a plateau in July 2015 then heading up again in April 2016 and increasing by 1 million barrels per day during the remainder of the year.

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