McKenzie – Peak Oil Barrel

Bakken by County

06/29/201506/29/2015 Ron Patterson 277 Comments

North Dakota publishes monthly ND Historical Barrels of Oil Produced by County. This data however does not include confidential wells. But they do estimate, by county, their confidential well production here: Oil and Gas Production Report

All charts are in barrels per day and are only for the last 16 months in order to get a better and expanded view of what each county is doing.

First a sixteen month view of all North Dakota production. North Dakota production, in April, stood at 1,168,636 bpd. That is 17,631 bpd below their production last September, seven months previous. North Dakota production is down 59,385 bpd since the high reached in December.

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Bakken by County and Legacy Decline

05/16/201505/16/2015 Ron Patterson 136 Comments

North Dakota publishes Historical Oil Production by County. However confidential wells are not included in these totals. But they also publish a State Summary Report which does include confidential well data for the previous two months. Working with both we can get a pretty good estimate of production from each county.

McKenzie had a 12,533 bp/d gain in March but they are still 32,447 below their December high.

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Bakken Data + Short Term Energy Outlook

05/13/201505/13/2015 Ron Patterson 322 Comments

North Dakota has published their Bakken Production Data as well as North Dakota Production Data.

North Dakota production was up 12,501 bpd above February but still stands 37,531 bpd below the December high and is still 789 bpd below the January production numbers.

Barrels per day per well is dropping, 12o for Bakken wells, 99 forN.D. Total and 23 for Conventional wells.

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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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Are Mountrail’s Sweet Spots Past Their Prime?

01/17/201501/17/2015 Ron Patterson 288 Comments

This is a Guest Post by Rune Likvern Fractional Flow

This post is an update on total Light Tight Oil (LTO) extraction from Bakken in North Dakota based upon actual data as of October 2014 from North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC). It further presents a statistical analysis on developments of well productivity with a detailed look at developments in Parshall, Reunion Bay and Sanish.

There were general improvements in LTO well productivity in Bakken during 2013.
Present trends in LTO well productivity for Mountrail’s sweet spots (Alger, Parshall, Reunion Bay, Sanish and Van Hook) suggests these are past their prime.
Figure 29 in this post show development in well productivity for Alger and Van Hook and figures 06, 08 and 10 for Parshall, Reunion Bay and Sanish. A common feature for Parshall, Reunion Bay, Sanish, and Van Hook is that these reached new highs in well productivity for wells started in 2013.
Alger has been in general decline since 2011.
LTO extraction in recent years may be viewed as a source for global swing production for oil.

NOTE: Actual data used for this analysis are all from North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC). Data are incomplete for around 2% of the wells.

For wells on confidential list, data on runs were used as proxies for extraction.

Production data for Bakken, North Dakota: Monthly Production Report Index

Formation data from: Bakken Horizontal Wells By Producing Zone

The important messages from this analysis are the trends in well productivity.

This post is an update and expansion of my post “Will the Bakken “Red Queen” Have to Run Faster?” from the summer of 2013 and may be read as a continuation of my post “Will the Bakken Red Queen Outrun Growth in Water Cut?”.

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