OPEC Update, February 17, 2023

D Coyne 231 Comments

The OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) for February 2023 was published recently. The last month reported in most of the OPEC charts that follow is January 2023 and output reported for OPEC nations is crude oil output in thousands of barrels per day (kb/d). In most of the OPEC charts that follow the blue line is monthly output and the red line is the centered twelve month average (CTMA) output. 

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Predicting Stratospheric Winds

Paul Pukite 86 Comments

Last week the USA shot down a suspected Chinese balloon with an air-to-air missile. The balloon itself was obviously just following the stratospheric jet stream and was not completely controllable in terms of navigation [1]. This brings up an interesting issue, as the state-of-the-art in atmospheric science has never been able to predict which direction the jet streams will follow at any future time. Nowhere is this more evident than with the stratospheric winds that encircle the Earth along the equator, known as the QBO. Scientists have been able to heuristically gauge when this wind will reverse it’s direction (hence the name Quasi-Biennial Oscillation) but have never been able to explain why it reverses. The first time they were able to systematically measure it was via the launching of instrumented weather balloons (radiosondes) in the 1950’s.

The QBO is visualized by the following animation:

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Non-OPEC’s Oil Production Rise Continues in October

Ovi 175 Comments

A Guest Post by Ovi

Below are a number of Crude plus Condensate (C + C) production charts, usually shortened to “oil”, for Non-OPEC countries. The charts are created from data provided by the EIA’s International Energy Statistics and are updated to October 2022. This is the latest and most detailed world oil production information available. Information from other sources such as OPEC, the STEO and country specific sites such as Russia, Brazil, Norway and China is used to provide a short term outlook for future output and direction for a few of these countries and the world. The US report has an expanded view beyond production by adding rig and frac charts.

October Non-OPEC oil production increased by 562 kb/d to 50,565 kb/d. The majority of the increase came from Kazakhstan, Norway and the US.

In the last report, it was noted that the STEO was expecting October to add 527 kb/d. They came very close. 👏👏

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