Open Thread Petroleum, April 17, 2019

Comments related to oil and natural gas production and closely related subjects in this thread.  Thanks.

“Shale companies from Texas to North Dakota have been managing their wells to maximize short-term oil production. That has long-term consequences for the future of the American energy boom. By front-loading the wells to boost early oil output, many companies have been able to accelerate growth. But these newer wells peter out more quickly, so companies have to drill new ones sooner to sustain their production. In effect, frackers have jumped on a treadmill and ratcheted up the speed, becoming ever more dependent on new capital to keep oil production humming, even as Wall Street is becoming more skeptical of funding the industry.” Rebecca Elliot, The Wall Street Journal (4/8)

OPEC + Russia through March 2019, in thousand barrels per day.

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The EIA’s Optimistic Outlook

Most of the data below is taken from from the EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook. The data through February, 2019 is the EIA’s best estimate of past production and all data from March 2019 through December 2020 is the EIA’s best estimate of future production. However in most cases February production is highly speculative so I drew the “projection” line between January and February.

Understand the above chart is Total Liquids, not C+C as I usually post. As you can see the EIA expects world petroleum liquids to keep climbing ever upwards.

This is the EIA’s data for OPEC all liquids with Production data from April 2019 through December 2020.

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