Here are the latest oil production numbers from the EIA. All data is in thousand barrels per day unless otherwise noted.
The USA through May 2018. The upward surge has stalled for the last two months. US production was down 30,000 bpd in May.
It is a little astonishing how close the Texas chart resembles the USA chart. Texas is, by far, the USA’s largest producer. As Texas goes, so goes the USA. Texas production was up 20,000 bpd in May.
Department of Economics, University of Utah
E-mail: minqi.li@economics.utah.edu
July 2018
This is Part 2 of the World Energy Annual Report in 2018. This part of the Annual Report provides updated analysis of world oil production and consumption, evaluates the future prospect of world oil supply and considers the implications of peak oil production for global economic growth.
(See Figure 18 near end of paper) Read More
This is Part 1 of the World Energy Annual Report in 2018. This author has developed world energy annual reports that have been posted at Peak Oil Barrel since 2014. The purpose of this Annual Report is to provide updated analysis of the current development of world energy production and consumption, consider possible scenarios of world energy supply over the 21st century, and evaluate their implications for global economic growth and climate change. This year’s Annual Report includes multiple parts:
Part 1 World Energy 2018-2050
Part 2 World Oil 2018-2050
Part 3 World Natural Gas 2018-2050
Part 4 World Coal 2018-2050
Part 5 Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Climate Change 2018-2100
Part 1 summarizes the general findings of this year’s World Energy Annual Report. Given the currently available information, world oil production is projected to peak in the early 2020s, world natural gas production is projected to peak in the 2030s, and world coal production is projected to peak in the late 2020s. Wind and solar power is projected to grow rapidly and account for about one-third of the world energy supply by the mid-21st century. Despite the rapid expansion of renewable energies, global energy supply and economic growth are expected to decelerate over the coming decades. By the mid-21st century, the energy-constrained global economic growth rates may not be sufficient to ensure economic and political stability for the existing world system. Although world carbon dioxide emissions are projected to peak before 2030, cumulative carbon dioxide emissions over the 21st century will be sufficient to result in global warming by more than two degrees Celsius relative to the pre-industrial time (assuming there will be no large-scale carbon sequestration programs).
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2017 trends for UK offshore production were disrupted by the stoppage in the Forties pipeline in December, which took several hundred thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day off line. Overall average oil production for the year dropped 61 kbpd (6.4%) and natural gas (including NGPLs) barely changed with an 800 boed drop. With the Forties issue exit rates don’t mean anything, but the running average oil production was on an upward trend in the second half of the year, which will continue through 2018, barring further major outages, while natural gas was noticeably declining and might struggle to maintain 2017s rate this year.
2016 reserve numbers fell for both oil and gas with few discoveries and some negative adjustments. Oil and gas production will decline from 2018, with accelerated falls from sometime in the mid-2020s without major new discoveries (which may include onshore shale gas, but that is not covered here).
Through 2015 and 2016 a lot of smaller, short cycle developments came on line as a result of the boom from the high price years from 2011. Now larger projects started in those years are ramping up. The largest is the Glen Lyon FPSO, which is part of a revamp of two mature fields: Scheihallion and Loyal. Additionally at the end of 2017 Kraken, Catcher (including Burgman and Varadero fields) and WIDP (for fields Harris and Barra) were started and will continue to ramp up through early 2018. Clair Ridge was commissioned in late 2017, it has dry trees and a single platform drilling rig; production will ramp up as the wells are completed (they may need to complete production/injection pairs before being able to produce from each block, which may slow things down a bit). Statoil’s heavy oil field, Mariner with nameplate 55 kbpd, will also start up in 2018, after some delays. The Captain field has started trials of polymer injection, which is intended to ramp up through 2021, and, if successful, will maintain current production rates at around 25 to 30 kbpd.
The availability from some of the larger, mature producers seems to be increasingly impacted by unplanned outages, possibly just due to chance or their age, but maybe also impacted by cost cutting in response to the price drop in 2015. Apart from the Forties pipeline issue, in January the Chevron-operated Erskine field was taken offline by a wax pipeline blockage while pigging, there have been a couple of instances of fields being partially evacuated because of water quality issues, and the Ninian platform was evacuated ahead of a major storm because of doubts over its structural integrity.
This is NOT a non-petroleum open thread, see post below for those comments.
Comments on oil and natural gas output should be in this thread, thank you.
