Tag: oil production

Norway Summary

George Kaplan 34 Comments

A Guest Post by George Kaplan

Exploration, Discoveries and Development

Drilling and development activity off shore Norway has been fairly steady through the life of the basin. This has been partly from government policy, through tax relief or direct action, but also through opening up of new areas as technology becomes available. It has moved from mainly producing oil to now being dominated by gas, although there is little direct gas exploration now (note that converting gas to o.e. is simple in S.I. units and is just a factor of 1000).

Drilling activity has been high in the 2000’s for development wells (including a lot of in fill drilling and some major redevelopments) and exploration (I think there is very favourable tax arrangements that encourage drilling in even fairly low prospective areas). Appraisal drilling has been more flat and there has been some reports that some discoveries have proved disappointing after start up, possibly because of insufficient drilling before development was approved.

There are twelve projects “approved for production” (i.e. in development) with average reserves of 26.5 MSm3 and average discovery year 2001; nineteen projects “production in clarification phase” (i.e. in FEED or pre-FEED) with average resources of 25 MSm3 and average discovery year also 2001; twenty nine projects “production likely but unclarified” (i.e. in conceptual design) with average resources of 10 MSm3 and average discovery year also 2003; and twenty eight projects “production not evaluated” with resources of 8.5 MSm3 and average discovery year also 2010.

The number of “hydrocarbon shows” has been large recently but they have mostly been small with “production unlikely” or “not yet evaluated” (and present prices mean most of these are likely to be deferred at best).

The number of development projects per year has, if anything, been increasing slightly, although the size has been generally decreasing. The number of shut down fields is increasing slowly but the have been a number that have had their life times extended beyond their original shut-down date (through improved reservoir performance and/or major redevelopments).

The oil price may have influenced activity but I can’t really see it much, maybe the effect of the current crash will be more obvious.

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US Oil Output Continues its Steady Decline

Ovi 147 Comments

A post by Ovi at peakoilbarrel

All of the oil (C + C) production data for the US states comes from the EIAʼs Petroleum Supply Monthly (PSM). At the end, an analysis of three different EIA monthly reports is provided. The charts below are updated to March 2020 for the 10 largest US oil producing states, (Production > or close to 100 kb/d).

Today’s June 1 update shows the continuous slow decline in oil output from US oil fields from November 2019 to March 2020. March output was 12,716 kb/d, down by 28 kb/d from February’s 12,744 kb/d. Also it should be noted that February’s output estimate from the EIA’s earlier May report, 12,833 kb/d, has been revised to 12,744 kb/d, a downward revision of 89 kb/d. The Red dot is the projected April output from the May Monthly Energy Review.

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Are Non-OPEC’s Best Days in the Rear-view Mirror

Ovi 108 Comments

A post by Ovi at peakoilbarrel.

While this post updates Non-OPEC production to January 2020, we are now in late May and the direction for future production for the next few years is clear, LOWER than where it was in March 2020. OPEC, in response to the reduced worldwide demand, arranged for a production reduction through a Declaration of Cooperation (DoC) with OPEC and Non-OPEC countries. Also Canada and Norway have indicated they will be cutting production in response to world wide reduced demand. The OPEC + DoC reduction schedule and chart are shown and discussed at the end of this post.

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Is November 2019 the New US Peak Oil Date?

Ovi 260 Comments

A post by Ovi at peakoilbarrel.

Here I am again reporting on out of date US February oil production from the EIA April report after the world oil environment has been turned on its head. Fortunately the EIA also has some forward looking reports that make use of more current data to provide projections for a few months out. Also the EIA has a guesstimate for weekly oil output which certainly provides an indication of the direction of production over the next month. Also there are reports on rig counts that indicate activity in oil basins and provide clues on where oil output is going. Down, Down, Down.

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Non-OPEC Oil Production Punches New High

Ovi 172 Comments

A post by Ovi at peakoilbarrel

As I wrote in my previous post, preparing these last two has been a surrealistic exercise. The oil market environment for this post has been even more surrealistic than the previous one and the associated futures contract prices have been extremely volatile this week. The May WTI front month contract went negative on April 20 for the first time ever and closed at negative $37.63/bbl while the June contract closed at $20.43. Today’s settled price, April 24, for the June contract is $16.94.

On April 7th, OPEC + finalized a record oil production cut of 9.7 Mb/d after days of discussion. The 9.7 million bpd cut will begin on May 1 and will extend through the end of June.  The cuts will then taper to 7.7 million bpd from July through the end of 2020, and 5.8 million bpd from January 2021 through April 2022. The 23-nation group will meet again on June 10 to determine if further action is needed.

The lone hold out to the deal was Mexico which was expected to cut 400 kb/d but would only agree to 100 kb/d. This was a real Mexican standoff and Mexico won because they had hedged their oil output and the more the price dropped, the more they made on their hedges. According to this report, they hedged their oil at $49/bbl in January. It was unclear how many barrels were hedged or how much was spent.

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