Light Tight Oil – Page 23 – Peak Oil Barrel

AEO 2015, The EIA’s Crude Production Expectations

04/17/201504/17/2015 Ron Patterson 235 Comments

The EIA came out with its final update of Annual Energy Outlook 2015. It seems that the EIA is extremely optimistic concerning future US crude oil production.

Here is a comparison with AEO 2014. The EIA still expects US crude production to peak in 2019 but at 10,472,000 bpd or 824,000 barrels per day higher than the expected last year. But the biggest difference is in the EIA’s change in decline expectations. They now expect the US to be producing 9,329,000 bpd in 2040 or 1,812 higher than they had 2040 production last year. This is the EIA’s reference, or most likely case.

Production from tight formations leads the growth in U.S. crude oil production across all AEO2015 cases. The path of projected crude oil production varies significantly across the cases, with total U.S. crude oil production reaching high points of 10.6 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in the Reference case (in 2020), 13.0 million bbl/d in the High Oil Price case (in 2026), 16.6 million bbl/d in the High Oil and Gas Resource case (in 2039), and 10.0 million bbl/d in the Low Oil Price case (in 2020).

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North Dakota Bakken February Production

04/14/201504/14/2015 Ron Patterson 396 Comments

The NDIC Bakken Production Data and the NDIC North Dakota Production Data is in. Production in the Bakken was down 11,941 barrels per day and production in all North Dakota was down 14,104 bpd. The numbers for January were revised slightly. January Bakken was down 35,064 from December and all North Dakota was down 36,331 bpd from December.

As I have pointed out before, the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report, for some unknown reason, estimates the last six or seven months, when the actual data is available. In the above chart they estimate from October on. This throws their current numbers way off. The DPR data includes the Montana Bakken therefore their numbers will naturally be higher than the North Dakota data.

Of course the EIA DPR will eventually bring their numbers into what North Dakota is reporting. The above is what the eventual Drilling Productivity Report will look like. (In Orange). Here is the amount the historical DPR is off.

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Petroleum Supply Monthly + Guest Post

02/28/201502/28/2015 Ron Patterson 460 Comments

The EIA has published their Petroleum Supply Monthly with all US production numbers through December 2014. The chart below shows the largest changes in December and Yearly production. Almost every state had a production increase. The largest decliner was Wyoming, down 7,000 bpd. Below are the biggest gainers and the amount of their production increase in thousand barrels per day for December and the whole year.

	December	2014
US	187	1366
Texas	49	684
North Dakota	39	297
GOM	68	157

The Gulf of Mexico was up 68,000 bpd in December but was down 56,000 bpd in November. The EIA had great hopes for the GOM expecting it to hit 2 million barrels per day in 2016. I don’t think that is going to happen. GOM production now stands at 1,441,000 bpd

Alaska’s decline seems to be slowing down slightly. They are now at 520,000 bpd.

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Bakken and North Dakota Production Report

12/12/201412/12/2014 Ron Patterson 441 Comments

The North Dakota Industrial Commission just published their Bakken Monthly Oil Production Statistics and also their ND Monthly Oil Production Statistics.

Bakken production was down 1,598 barrels per day to 1,118,010 bpd. All North Dakota production was down 4,054 bpd to 1,182,174 bpd.

From the Director’s Cut, bold mine:

The drilling rig count dropped 2 from September to October, an additional 3 from October to November, and has since fallen 5 more from November to today. The number of well completions decreased from 193(final) in September to 134(preliminary) in October. Three significant forces are driving the slow-down: oil price, flaring reduction, and oil conditioning. Several operators have reported postponing completion work to achieve the NDIC gas capture goals. There were no major precipitation events, but there were 9 days with wind speeds in excess of 35 mph (too high for completion work).

The drillers outpaced completion crews in October. At the end of October there were about 650 wells waiting on completion services, an increase of 40.

Crude oil take away capacity is expected to remain adequate as long as rail deliveries to coastal refineries keep growing.

Rig count in the Williston Basin is set to fall rapidly during the first quarter of 2015. Utilization rate for rigs capable of 20,000+ feet is currently about 90%, and for shallow well rigs (7,000 feet or less) about 60%.

Sep rig count 193
Oct rig count 191
Nov rig count 188
Today’s rig count is 183

Sep Sweet Crude Price = $74.85/barrel
Oct Sweet Crude Price = $68.94/barrel
Nov Sweet Crude Price = $60.61/barrel
Today Sweet Crude Price = $41.75/barrel (lowest since March 2009)

I just checked Rig Count. It now stands at 181 but one of them is drilling a salt water disposal well. So they have 180 rigs drilling for oil right now.

Bakken wells producing increased by 118 to 8,602 while North Dakota wells producing increased by 92 to 11,507. Since Bakken wells are included in the North Dakota count this means at least 26 wells outside the Bakken had to be shut down.
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More on Bakken Production, Choke Theory

11/26/201411/27/2014 Ron Patterson 308 Comments

The US Petroleum Supply Monthly just came out with production data for every state and territory. US supply was up 168,000 bpd to 8,864,000 bpd in September. The biggest gainers were North Dakota, up 53,000 bpd to 1,185,000 bpd and Alaska up 79,000 to 477,000 bpd. Alaska was way down in both July and August and are just recovering from that. There was only one big loser, New Mexico, down 18,000 bpd. Texas was up only 9,000 barrels per day which was surprising. The Gulf of Mexico was down 3,000 bpd.

The Choke theory and why I ain’t buying it.

North Dakota publishes a Daily Activity Report Index of all permits and other well activity in the Bakken as well as the rest of North Dakota. In this report is a list of all producing wells completed as well as wells released from confidential (tight hole) status. Wells usually stay on this list from a few days to a few months, but the average is only a few weeks.

I have collected this data from October 2013 to present and found some startling results. But some have said this data means nothing, that wells are usually choked off by the driller so therefore we can gain nothing from the data. But looking at the individual wells that just doesn’t make any sense. No, I agree that the driller chokes but that he would not gradually choke more according to increasing well number.

Below I have posted the first 24 hour data for all 122 wells reported by North Dakota for the first 25 days of November. The first 24 hour production ranges from over 3000 barrels of oil per day to a low of only 10 barrels of oil per day. Barrels of water range from a high of 6663 bwpd to a low of 48 bwpd. And the percent water cut ranges form a high of 94.15% water to a low of 12.75% water.

It just seems incredible to me to claim that these numbers are meaningless. Throughout all the almost 14 months of data I have gathered there are lots of very large producing wells and a lot of small producing wells. The point is as the well number increases the number of very large producing wells seems to decrease while the number of small producing wells seems to increase. And I just don’t believe this is due to the many drillers, after checking their well number, decides what size choke to apply.

Just below the list of all wells I have averaged the production according to well number. The sample however is not large enough to really mean a lot. The number of wells in the sample are: Below 26000, 11 wells – 26000s 35 wellw – 27000s 54 wells – 28000s 23 wells.
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