Oil Supply, Oil Price and the Economy

Ron Patterson 82 Comments

There has been considerable debate lately on what effect the supply and price of oil is having on the economy. It is, to my mind, a lot more serious than the vast majority of economists believe. In fact one can just look at what is happening today to see the effect of a constrained oil supply and high oil prices. Just look at the unemployment rate:

Shadow Unemployment

Real unemployment is double what it was in 2007. And it is creeping higher.

If you have not watched Oil Supply and Demand Forecasting with Steven Kopits then you have missed the best and most informative video that has come along since this whole debate started over a decade ago. I have just finished watching it for the third time. This time I made notes.

Kopits makes it very clear that oil is a binding constraint on economic growth. Of course that is obvious to most of us but you would be surprised at how many economists deny this. But for starters a few charts from Kopits video:

Kopits 2

This is a direct result of the high price of oil.

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Eagle Ford Update

D Coyne 203 Comments

efchart/

Figure 1

 This was also posted at Peak Oil Climate and Sustainability

It has been a while since I have updated my estimate of actual output from the Eagle Ford.

Kevin Carter (KC at Peak Oil Barrel) graciously offered help pulling together data for the 39 fields which make up the Eagle Ford play (see this page at the RRC of TX, spreadsheet download here .)
Kevin has strong programming skills in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and has made the job of gathering the Eagle Ford data considerably easier.  Thank you Kevin!

My previous estimates only included the Eagleville fields (Eagle Ford 1 and Eagle Ford 2 and the inactive Eagle Ford and Eagle Ford Sour fields), Briscoe Ranch, Sugarkane, Dewitt, Gates Ranch, Hawkville, and Eagle Ridge fields.  Together these 10 fields produce about 99% of Eagle Ford C+C output so these previous estimates are not bad, this new estimate includes all Eagle Ford output reported by the RRC from June 1993 to January 2014.

Note that from June 1993 to Dec 2006 C+C monthly output from the Eagle Ford play was 12 b/d or less, which is why the chart starts at Jan 2007.

An Excel spreadsheet with the data can be downloaded here .  More below the fold.

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The EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report, Is Productivity Really Improving?

Ron Patterson 122 Comments

The EIA just published their latest Drilling Productivity Report. They kept their very linear increase for all LTO plays except for the Bakken. Strangely they updated their Bakken data right up through January according to the data they apparently received from North Dakota.

DPR Bakken

The last data point is February for the North Dakota data and May for the DPR data.

But the EIA posted some strange Legacy Decline numbers for the Bakken;

Bakken Decline Chart

Now this just doesn’t make any sense. The legacy decline is supposed to be the number of barrels per day all the wells in the combined declined. That number should increase, but gradually as new production comes on line. That is the more production the greater the decline. They have the decline rate at 60,553 bp/d in November, jumping to 123,248 in December, then falling back to 63,459 in January. That is impossible! The decline, in barrels per day, increases as production increases. But if production decreases then the number of barrels per day that declines must decrease, not increase.

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Bakken Update February Production Numbers

Ron Patterson 136 Comments

The latest Update on Bakken and North Dakota LTO production is out.
ND Monthly Bakken Oil Production Statistics (Bakken Only)
ND Monthly Oil Production Statistics (All North Dakota)

Bakken Barrels Per Day

Bakken production in February was 888,398 barrels per day and all North Dakota February production was 951,350 barrels per day. Some revisions were made in the past production numbers. Only the last three months were significant however. Listed below are the actual production changes, per month, for the last three months:

Month         Bakken       North Dakota
Dec 13      -45,528        -40,284
Jan 14         6,542           -2,218
Feb 14       16,643          16,224

The Director’s Cut for this has not been published yet. I will update this post when it has been.  There were 119 additional wells in the Bakken and 79 in all North Dakota. That means a lot of North Dakota Wells were shut down.

A Bismark engineering firm has calculated the probable Bakken Peak.
Competition from Texas, winter expected to limit ND oil production

MINOT, N.D. – North Dakota oil production, which is poised to break the 1 million barrels per day benchmark, will peak at 1.2 million to 1.5 million barrels per day over the next five years, limited by winter weather and competition from Texas, a Bismarck engineering firm said this week.

I have charted that prediction below. The figures are the average yearly production.

Bakken Engineering Firm

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OPEC Update, March Crude Production Data

Ron Patterson 23 Comments

The new Opec Monthly Oil Market Report is out with the March OPEC crude only production data. OPEC crude only fell by 626 kb/d and that was after February production was revised up by 121 kb/d. Big changes were Iraq, down 288 kb/d after February was revised up by 84 kb/d. Angola was down 154 kb/d.

OPEC 12

Iraq is back to the same levels it reached in September of 2012. But Iraq is scheduled to increase production. West Qurna-2 is starting to ramp up. It is supposed to be producing 400 kb/d by the end of the year. I really doubt that it will get to those levels by then but it will definitely add to Iraqi production.

Iraq

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