Tag: Natural Gas Reserves

GoM Reserve Revisions for 2019

George Kaplan 323 Comments
A Guest Post by George Kaplan

Overview

For 2019 BOEM showed a large increase in remaining reserves of 1.3Gboe,  91% of it oil, from newly discovered oil with Appomattox/Vicksburg and Vito the largest contributors at over 400mmboe each, followed by Buckskin and Kaikias, which are fairly large multi-well tie-backs, and smaller, one or two well  tie-backs of Blue Wing Olive, Constellation, Claibourne, Red Zinger and Stonefly. These discoveries were made with exploration wells between 2006 and 2016 but were only counted as reserves once firm development plans were put in place. Even given this the year in which BOEM includes the reserves is rather opaque and idiosyncratic, for example some of theses fields started production before 2018, and some developments, notably Kings Quay, are more advanced than Vito but are not included. 

Other additions came from revisions to Thunder Horse, Atlantis, Mars-Ursa and Jack/St. Malo, which had major brownfield developments. The fields were not all added as discoveries or adjustments for 2019, but were spread over 2016 to 2019. Some other discoveries under development, such as Anchor, Whale and Ballymore, or in pre-FID studies, such as North Platte and Fort Sumter, will likewise be added against their discovery years as their estimates are finalised. Several of these projects are among the first to use new 20ksi wellhead equipment and it will be interesting to see what teething troubles are experienced.

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Annual Reserve Revisions Part IV: Shale Producers

George Kaplan 207 Comments
A guest post by George Kaplan

EIA Liquids Reserve Estimates

This follows on from Part I, which looked at EIA reserves and revision estimates for US as a whole and the GoM, and concentrates on the on-shore tight oil and (below)gas producing regions.

The EIA issues revision data by whole states or state districts rather than by basin, so some of the reserves and production, but a small proportion, will be from conventional reservoirs. It does give total reserves for each shale basin but not the changes, and I didn’t go to the trouble of pro-rating everything against that. Its data only goes through 2019; the 2020 update will be out in December or January.

The regions for each basins used are Permian – Texas Districts 7C, 8 and 8A and East New Mexico; Bakken –  North Dakota and Montana; Eagle Ford – Texas Districts 1, 2, 3 and 4 Onshore; Niobara –  Colorado; Marcelus – Pennsylvania and West Virginia; Utica –  Ohio; Haynesville – Louisiana South Onshore and Texas District 6; Barnett – Texas Districts 5, 7B and 9; Woodford – Oklahoma ; Fayetteville – Arkansas.

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Annual Reserve Revisions Part II: International Major IOCs

George Kaplan 96 Comments
A guest post by George Kaplan

There’s not much revelatory here, more a completist’s list showing reserve changes for seven IOCs, with more to come over the next months, but it gives me an excuse for a rant at the end.

There are a few general trends but exceptions to each one. As discoveries have dropped production has been maintained, presumably through in-fill drilling and other brownfield activities – this can’t be construed from the data shown, although deeper analysis of the annual reports such as looking at drilling activities and financial details might be able to give further insight. Therefore remaining reserves have fallen as have reserve to production (R/P) ratios. Replacement ratios have been at or just below 100% and seem to be dropping faster – i.e. depletion is accelerating and actually seems to be particularly pronounced in recent years (acceleration of acceleration is called jerk or jounce I think). Looking at individual companies doesn’t give the full picture because of purchases and sales, but there is less of that than I expected for the companies shown here. A fuller picture might come when combining all the larger companies but even then it will not be complete. The recovery ratios are show for the organic numbers (i.e. without the net trades) as solid lines and trend lines with overall ratios shown as marker points. 

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Annual Reserve Changes Part I: EIA and Super-Majors

George Kaplan 147 Comments
A guest post by George Kaplan

EIA US Reserve Estimates

The EIA publishes reserve data for the USA, usually in December of the following year – so that the figures presented here are for 2019. Only proved category reserves are shown and the numbers are based on companies’ annual reports and 10-k or 20-f filings (so that last year’s numbers are now being addressed as most companies have filed). Not every company is included, otherwise the net acquisitions and dispersals (the yellow bars) would surely have to sum to zero, but most are and all the big players. Net adjustments include revisions (which may be technical or economic) and other adjustments, which are fiddle factors to make the numbers add up but are usually zero or small; improved recovery is here included as discoveries and extensions. The yellow dashed line shows the net change.

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MEXICO Oil Reserves and Production

D Coyne 310 Comments

This is a Guest Post by George Kaplan

In dollar terms, since mid 2015 Mexico has been a net importer of hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas, petroleum products and petrochemicals combined). To date it has been a relatively small and fairly constant amount, but with their oil production declining, and oil prices apparently continuing to fall while natural gas prices may be on the rise, the net cost could now start to increase.

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