Peak Oil Barrel – Page 213 – The Reported Death of Peak Oil Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

When Will Peak Oil Actually Arrive? Costs Way Too High and Rising

02/25/201402/25/2014 Ron Patterson 210 Comments

When will Peak Oil actually arrive? There has been considerable debate on that point recently. Well if you are talking about “Conventional Crude Oil” it arrived in 2005. But in many cases unconventional crude oil works just as well so I think we must count that. I will comment on that at the end of this post below.

The chart below is kb/d with the last data point, 2013, is the average through October.

Averaging the first 10 months of 2013, World oil production was up only 66,000 barrels per day. And without the US LTO input, world production would have been down 807,000 barrels per day, lower than the 2005 level.

And it is all about LTO, primarily it is about three oil plays, the Bakken, Eagle Ford and the Permia.

The data for this chart was taken from the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report. The data is through December 2013 but the last four months must be taken with a grain of salt. They are nothing but a wild guess from the EIA. For instance December production in the Bakken was down over 50,000 barrels per day but the this report has the Bakken up by over 20,000 bp/d. Not to worry however they will correct the data in three or four months.

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Reverse Engineering the North Dakota Bakken Data

02/21/201402/25/2014 Ron Patterson 138 Comments

Notice: The data I thought would be out today: EIA Crude Oil Production by State will not be out until Thursday, Feb. 27th. However I will have another post coming out later today anyway.

This is a guest post by Ovi Colavincenzo

There is considerable discussion on this site regarding when the North Dakota portion of the Bakken will peak. Having looked at the monthly Bakken data that the State publishes, it raised the question of whether it was possible to do a reverse analysis of the data and then use it to develop a model that would replicate the ND Bakken production, exactly. The objective being to provide further insight on what is happening in the ND Bakken.

In order to do this, the following conditions and information were required:

A monotonically increasing number of new producing wells
A typical/average decline curve for the ND Bakken field
Not too many wells being shut/reworked each month

The last bullet is a preferred condition because if a number of low producing wells are shut and replaced by newer high producing wells, then the estimated flow rate of the new wells will be on the high side.

From 1999 to mid 2005, approximately 200 wells were in production in every month. The addition of an increasing number of new wells began to occur in mid-2005, so start date for the analysis was set at the beginning of 2008 to address the first bullet point above.

Figure 1: Source: The Shale Revolution” by J.D. Hughes

For the decline curves, two were used and are shown in Figures 1 and 2. One came from “The Shale Revolution” by J.D. Hughes, November 19, 2013 shown in Figure 1. The other came from North Dakota’s Directors cut, “Tribal Leader Summit” 09 05 12 (PDF), Figure 2.

Figure 2: Source: North Dakota Director’s Cut “Tribal Leader Summit”

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EIA’s International Energy Statistics C+C Update – October Production Data

02/19/201402/19/2014 Ron Patterson 67 Comments

The EIA has updated their International Energy Statistics with the October data. There were some major revisions in the September data. I only track Crude + Condensate so all figures and graphs are for C+C only.

Revisions for September were World, revised down 417 kb/d, Non-OPEC revised down 377 kb/d, Canada revised down 327 kb/d and Brazil revised down 54 kb/d. All other revisions were minor.

After revisions World C+C production was up 454 kb/d, Non-OPEC up 469 kb/d, Canada up 338 kb/d, China up 148 kb/d, Libya up 190 kb/d, Iraq up 150 kb/d, Saudi Arabia was down 300 kb/d and Australia was down 71 kb/d. Lots of other ups and downs but all smaller.

World C+C, average through October for 2013 is up 115 kb/d over the average of 2012.

Non-OPEC average C+C for 2013 through October is up 825 kb/d over 2012.

Bakken Update, Big Drop in December

02/14/201402/14/2014 Ron Patterson 118 Comments

North Dakota has published the latest production numbers.
ND Monthly Oil Production Statistics (All North Dakota)
ND Monthly Bakken* Oil Production Statistics (Bakken Only)

Bakken production fell 48,395 bp/d to 862,389 bp/d and all North Dakota production fell 53,226 bp/d to 923,227 bp/d. That was after Bakken November production had been revised up by 2,908 bp/d and North Dakota November production was revised up by 3,173 bp/d.

From the Director’s Cut

<i>The drilling rig count was up from Nov to Dec, but the number of well completions dropped from 138 to 119. Days from spud to initial production increased 18 days to 132. Investor confidence appears to be growing, but there is still some concerns about the uncertainty surrounding federal policies on taxation and hydraulic fracturing regulation, but the big story is the December weather. Low temperatures of 21 to 31 degrees below zero, 4 major snow events, and 5 major wind events. Dickinson had the 4th coldest December on record and from Williston to Bismarck it was the 9th snowiest December since 1890.</i>

The December decline in North Dakota production was the highest in the history of the state. Total North Dakota increased production in 2012 by 233,349 barrels per day. However the increase in 2013 was only 154,317 bp/d. Their production increase was 34 percent less in 2013 than it was in 2012.
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OPEC Update and EIA Short Term Energy Outlook

02/12/201402/12/2014 Ron Patterson 83 Comments

The OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is just out with OPEC crude only production numbers for January 2014. OPEC Crude production was up 28,000 bp/d in January but that was after December production had been revised upward by 240,000 bp/d. November production was revised down by 51,000 bp/d.

Of course Saudi is always the one to watch because it is generally believed that they have spare capacity. I think they had spare capacity back in 2011 but are now producing flat out, just like every other OPEC producer.

Saudi crude production was down 115,000 bp/d in January but that was after December production had been revised upward by 119,000 bp/d and November revised up 52,000 bp/d. I think that surge upward early in 2013 is a telling indication. That was Manifa coming on line.

Libya had the biggest gain in January, up 270,000 bp/d to 510,000. I guess peace may be breaking out in a few places there. Without Libya’s gain OPEC production would have been down by 242,000 bp/d.

Charts of all 12 OPEC nations can be found here: OPEC Charts.