Jean Laherrere’s Take, Plus Other News

Note: Jean Laherrere sent me the below post and asked me to post it in reply to comments posted by Dennis Coyne and Political Economist on my post Bakken Update, March Production Data. But that was several days ago, the comments are stale. Also it was too large for a comment. So since we are a period where there is a dearth of data, I decided to make a post of it. Below Jean’s graphs and comments I have added a couple of news Items.
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Policial Economist displays a graph for Bakken production Hubbert linearization trending towards 3.5 Gb, but it is from EIA DPR for the period January 2007 to June 2014 : it is not real data (we are not yet in June 2014) but estimates.

It is different from mine trending towards 2.4 Gb, but it is only for North Dakota Bakken using ND state data from 1955 up to March 2014.

In many of my papers I state that production Hubbert linearization is not very reliable and it is better to rely on the creaming curve of cumulative backdated 2P discovery versus cumulative number of fields. But for LTO there is no reliable way to estimate 2P reserves, because only the volume generated by the source rocks (using Rock Eval measures from cores) can be estimated but the amount lost from this generated oil and gas cannot be estimated and the recovery from what is left within the fractures needs longer historical data.

Laherrere E

The ND production excluding Bakken Hubbert linearization trends also towards 2.5 GbLaherrere

It is why I use a NG oil ultimate of 5 Gb with both 2.5 Gb for Bakken and non-Bakken.
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Bakken Update, March Production Data

The Bakken production data, as well as the All North Dakota production data just came out with their production numbers for March 2014.

Bakken Barrels Per Day

Bakken production was up 914,003 bp/d, up 25,091 bp/d from February. All North Dakota production was 977,061 bp/d, up 24,006 bp/d from February. That was a new record for the Bakken but not for all North Dakota. They are still 538 bp/d below their November 2013 numbers.

The surge in the Bakken really started in July 2011 when they doubled number of additional wells per month. Production continued to climb in pretty much a straight line through October 2012. Then bad weather and other problems started to affect production. They are now about 150,000 bp/d below where they would have been had they continued on that trajectory. (Line on chart.)

Non-Bakken

North Dakota production outside the Bakken declined at about 12% per year until the number of additional wells per month doubled on July 2011. Then it flattened out as some of those new wells were drilled outside the Bakken. But now additional wells outside the Bakken have dropped and so has production. Production outside the Bakken is still down almost three thousand bp/d from the December numbers. So though the Bakken hit a new high in March, total North Dakota production is still below the November numbers.
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OPEC Update with April MOMR Data Plus Eagle Ford

The new OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with the April Crude only data. No real big movers. Total OPEC crude production was up 131 kb/d but that was after March production had been revised down 148 kb/d.

OPEC 12

OPEC 12 crude only production stood at 29,593,000 bp/d. That is just over 2 million bp/d from their recent peaks in July 2008 and April 2012.

Iraq

Iraq was the only big mover, up 102 kb/d from last month.
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Eagle Ford Update

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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