Dean has provided me with his latest update for Texas Oil and Natural Gas production. Texas C+C output has increased slightly over the first 3 months of 2016.
Texas C+C output was 3549 kb/d in March 2016, about 39 kb/d higher than February. Read More
Where did all the oil go? The peak is back
An extensive new scientific analysis published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy & Environment says that proved conventional oil reserves as detailed in industry sources are likely “overstated” by half.
According to standard sources like the Oil & Gas Journal, BP’s Annual Statistical Review of World Energy, and the US Energy Information Administration, the world contains 1.7 trillion barrels of proved conventional reserves.
However, according to the new study by Professor Michael Jefferson of the ESCP Europe Business School, a former chief economist at oil major Royal Dutch/Shell Group, this official figure which has helped justify massive investments in new exploration and development, is almost double the real size of world reserves.
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIRES) is a series of high-quality peer-reviewed publications which runs authoritative reviews of the literature across relevant academic disciplines.
According to Professor Michael Jefferson, who spent nearly 20 years at Shell in various senior roles from head of planning in Europe to director of oil supply and trading, “the five major Middle East oil exporters altered the basis of their definition of ‘proved’ conventional oil reserves from a 90 percent probability down to a 50 percent probability from 1984. The result has been an apparent (but not real) increase in their ‘proved’ conventional oil reserves of some 435 billion barrels.”
Global reserves have been further inflated, he wrote in his study, by adding reserve figures from Venezuelan heavy oil and Canadian tar sands – despite the fact that they are “more difficult and costly to extract” and generally of “poorer quality” than conventional oil. This has brought up global reserve estimates by a further 440 billion barrels.
Jefferson’s conclusion is stark: “Put bluntly, the standard claim that the world has proved conventional oil reserves of nearly 1.7 trillion barrels is overstated by about 875 billion barrels. Thus, despite the fall in crude oil prices from a new peak in June, 2014, after that of July, 2008, the ‘peak oil’ issue remains with us.”
The North American Baker Hughes Rig Count came out Friday. The decline continues. Baker Hughes gives an oil and gas breakout for every basin and state with five years of historical data.
Baker Hughes has twenty eight and one half years of historical data for total US rigs but only five years for individual basins. Gas rigs peaked in August 2008 at 1,606 rigs, over six years before the peak in Oil rigs. On February, 26, gas total US gas rig count stood at 102, a decline of over over 93%.
The Texas RRC Oil and Gas Production Data is out. There appeared to be no decline in December production and may have even been a slight increase.
The Texas RRC data is incomplete and only gives an indication as to whether Texas production increased or decreased. The data appears to droop because each month the the Texas Railroad Commission receives a little more data and the totals increase, little by little, month by month, until after many months the data is complete.
In my charts I post the past six months of data in order to give some indication as to whether production is increasing or decreasing. The final data is through December and the EIA data is through November.
Texas crude plus condensate declined a little in November but seemed to make up that decline in December. Total Texas C+C seems to be on a flat plateau, declining in Eagle Ford but making up that decline in the Permian and the rest of Texas.
The EIA estimates the final Texas data through November. They have Texas peaking in March and down about a quarter of a million barrels per day since that point.
This is a guest post by Steve St. Angelo of SRSroccoReport.Com. All opinions expressed in this post are his and do not necessarily reflect those of Ron Patterson.
The U.S. Empire is in serious trouble as the collapse of its domestic shale gas production has begun. This is just another nail in a series of nails that have been driven into the U.S. Empire coffin.
Unfortunately, most investors don’t pay attention to what is taking place in the U.S. Energy Industry. Without energy, the U.S. economy would grind to a halt. All the trillions of Dollars in financial assets mean nothing without oil, natural gas or coal. Energy drives the economy and finance steers it. As I stated several times before, the financial industry is driving us over the cliff.
The Great U.S. Shale Gas Boom Is Likely Over For Good
Very few Americans noticed that the top four shale gas fields combined production peaked back in July 2015. Total shale gas production from the Barnett, Eagle Ford, Haynesville and Marcellus peaked at 27.9 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in July and fell to 26.7 Bcf/d by December 2015:
As we can see from the chart, the Barnett and Haynesville peaked four years ago at the end of 2011. Here are the production profiles for each shale gas field: