EIA’s June 2022 Oil Production Outlooks

A guest post by Ovi

Each month the EIA produces four reports which project oil output for the US and the World. The Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO) forecasts oil output for a period of 12 to 24 months into the future for US and World oil production. A second report, the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) forecasts the combined production for conventional and tight oil in the main tight oil basins, four months ahead of the EIA monthly report. Their third report, Light Tight Oil (LTO), reports on only the tight oil produced in seven tight oil basins and a few smaller ones. A fourth and final outlook is the Monthly Energy Review (MER) that forecasts US output two months past the official US production numbers, for this report that will be October and November. Due to technical issues at the EIA, the LTO report and the MER were not available at press time.

Production numbers/charts for May for four countries obtained from their official sites are provided below.

Normally the Outlooks report appears at the end of the monthly US report. For this month it has been posted separately and early.

1) Short Term Energy Outlook

The June STEO provides projections for the next 21 months, starting with April 2022 to December 2023, for US C + C and other countries. 

The June 2022 STEO has revised downward its projected US oil output from May 2022 to Q3-23. However Q4-23 has been revised up from the previous May 2022 STEO. In December 2023 output is expected to reach 13,444 kb/d, 160 kb/d higher than reported in the May report

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US March Oil Production Recovers

A guest post by Ovi

All of the oil (C + C) production data for the US state charts comes from the EIAʼ’s Petroleum Supply monthly PSM. 

U.S. March production increased by 349 kb/d to 11,655 kb/d. Relative to November’s 2021 production of 11,769 kb/d, March is still 114 kb/d lower. The main increases came from Texas 147 kb/d, ND 66 kb/d and the GOM 75 kb/d.

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Permian Basin, Bakken/Three Forks and Eagle Ford Net Volume

In the discussion here I use the term net volume to refer to the volume of prospective rock that might be developed to produce tight oil.  For each bench of a prospective tight oil play (Wolfcamp A would be one example of a bench) there is an area estimate (5733 thousand acres for Wolfcamp A of Delaware) and a success ratio (%) = 94.7, in the case of Wolfcamp A.  Net acres are the total acres times the success ratio, for Wolfcamp A, 5429 thousand net acres.  On average the Wolfcamp A of the Delaware basin is about 400 feet thick, so the net volume would be net acres times thickness or 2172 million acre-feet.  An acre-foot is a volume that is one acre (44,000 square feet) by one foot thick or 44,000 cubic feet (or a box that is 1000 ft long by 44 feet wide by 1 foot high.)

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US Tight Oil Scenario based on BNP Paribas Study

An interesting analysis was recently published by BNP Paribas (one of the top 10 banks in the World by assets) entitled Wells, Wires, and Wheels… . In that analysis they argue that long term oil prices will fall to $20/b or less in order for oil used for personal land transport to compete with EVs powered by wind and solar at current cost levels.
I reworked my oil price assumptions, first with a simple scenario that follows the EIA’s AEO 2018 reference oil price scenario up to $70/b in 2017$ and then remains at that level long term. Second I noticed that a scenario with such an oil price assumption sees tight oil output fall in 2022 so the scenario was revised with oil prices rising from 70 to 80 per barrel from 2022 to 2024 and then remaining at that level until 2028. The BNP Paribus analysis suggests that EVs will have cut significantly into oil demand by 2022 to 2025 so I assume oil prices fall to $20/b over the next 10 years.
Scenarios below.

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