The weekly Baker Hughes Rig Count for North America and the International monthly rig count is out. In the charts below the monthly data is through February 2015 and the weekly data is as of March 6th.
World Rig Count, counting oil, gas and miscellaneous rigs are down 684 rigs over the last three months. The annual spikes you here are caused by Canada.
Removing the seasonal Canadian spikes gives you a better picture of what is happening to the world rig count.
Baker Hughes publishes a weekly oil and gas rig count by producing basin. I have created charts of all the most productive basins in order that we can see where oil and gas rigs are increasing or decreasing. Their historic rig count, by basin, goes back 4 years.
It needs to be noted that Baker Hugs does not count rigs that are not actively drilling. Rigs that are “Moving In, Rigging Up” are not counted in the Baker Hughes count though they are counted by some others including the North Dakota Industrial Commission.
All rig counts are of Friday, February 27, 2015.
But first, total US weekly rig count. The oil rig count stands at 986, down 623 from a high of 1,609 in October. The gas rig count stands at 280, down 656 rigs from the high of 935 in October of 2011. However this data base goes back only 4 years. The all time high for gas rigs was 1,606 in September of 2008. The 1,609 oil rig count in October 2014 was an all time high for oil rigs. That record is valid only back to the days when Baker Hughes began separate stats for oil and gas rigs however.
Eagle Ford oil rigs currently stand at 136, down from a high 214 in April 2014. Gas rig count is 21, down from 95 in October 2011.
The EIA just released their International Energy Statistics with world production numbers through October 2014. There were no big surprises in this report.
World C+C production was up 731,000 bpd to 78,967,000 bpd. This is a new high.
All the gain in the last few years has come from non-OPEC. Non-OPEC production was up 374 kbd in September and up another 370 kbd in October to 46,002,000 bpd.
The Cornucopians are exuberant, they believe that collapsing of oil prices dealt the death knell for peak oil. An oil glut, they say, is what we have, not peak oil. But an oil glut is exactly what we would expect at the very peak. After all, that is what peak oil is, that is the the point in time when the world produces more oil than ever in history… and the most it ever will produce.
I am of the firm conviction that the world is at the peak of world oil production right now, or was at that point three or four months ago. I think history will show that the 12 months of September 2014 through August 2015 will be the one year peak. Whether the calendar year peak is 2014 or 2015 is the only thing still in question, or that is my opinion anyway.
The EIA says, in their Short Term Energy Outlook says US Crude oil will peak, at least temporarily, in May 2015.
Looking at the area breakdown for total US production:
This chart includes net US crude oil imports. Notice how they expect crude oil imports to bottom out in February of 2015 at 5.78 mbd then increase to 6.71 mbd in August before declining to 5.82 mbd in December.
There has been considerable dispute over how many new wells required to keep production flat in the Bakken and Eagle Ford. One college professor posted, over on Seeking Alpha, figures that it would take 114 rigs in the Bakken and 175 in Eagle Ford to keep production flat. He bases his analysis on David Hughes’ estimate that the legacy decline rate fir Bakken wells is 45% and 35% for Eagle Ford wells. And he says a rig can drill 18 wells a year, or about one well every 20.3 days.
The EIA has comes up with different numbers. The data for the chart below was taken from the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report.
The EIA has current legacy decline at about 6.3% per month for Bakken wells and about 7.7% per month for Eagle Ford wells. That works out to be about 54% per year for the Bakken and 62% per year for Eagle Ford. I believe the EIA’s estimate of legacy decline, in this case, is fairly accurate. For instance last month Mountrail County had over 30 new wells completed yet still declined by 6.4%. And in December 2013 North Dakota declined by 5.22% yet had 119 new well completions.
I have examined the last sixteen Directr’s Cuts and gleaned, I think, some important data… I think.
Rig count has averaged 189 rigs per mnth and has been fairly steady while new well completions has averaged 172 wells per month but has been highly erratic.
New well completions depends far more on weather and fracking crews than rigs. In October there was 650 wells awaiting fracking crews. At 172 wells per month that is almost a four months supply. And that is also what the average spud to completion is, 120 days.