EIA Non-OPEC Oil Production Updated to July 2019

Below are a number of Non-OPEC charts created from data provided by the EIA’s International Energy Statistics.

The charts and table below are primarily for the world’s largest Non-OPEC producers and are updated to July 2019, except for the U.S., which is updated to August 2019. The first set of charts is for Non-OPEC countries with production over 500 kb/d and the last few provide a world overview.

Under some charts are added country comments from the IEA since I have updated data from them up to September 2019. While the IEA production numbers reflect “all liquids”, their July to September increments provide an indication of how the trend in the EIA charts will change by September.

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Arguments over RCP8.5

The climate change scientific consensus is summarized via the annual IPCC documents. In one of the IPCC sections, projections of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel usage are made in the context of several scenarios, which are referred to as Representation Concentration Pathways (RCP).  Historically, the “business-as-usual” pathway was declared to be RCP8.5.

That has worked out as describing an extreme emission scenario IF society did not take corrective action in reducing emissions. In other words, RCP8.5 tracks a growth path in fossil fuels that is extrapolated from the current economic growth rate and largely dead-reckoned FF production increases.

Recently an energy analyst named Michael Liebreich challenged this assumption in the context of the possibility of greater fossil fuel depletion than is currently mapped out in the IPCC, calling the RCP8.5 estimate “bollox” in a tweet.  When challenged on this assertion, he rationalized his claim as follows:

“Here’s why I reject scare stories based on RCP 8.5 and SSP5. They assume a vast increase in coal use in the absence of more international cooperation on climate. But the reality is that it coal power is peaking already. Climate change is scary enough, we don’t need ghost stories.”

— Michael Liebreich (@MLiebreich) August 4, 2019

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US Tight Oil Scenario based on BNP Paribas Study

An interesting analysis was recently published by BNP Paribas (one of the top 10 banks in the World by assets) entitled Wells, Wires, and Wheels… . In that analysis they argue that long term oil prices will fall to $20/b or less in order for oil used for personal land transport to compete with EVs powered by wind and solar at current cost levels.
I reworked my oil price assumptions, first with a simple scenario that follows the EIA’s AEO 2018 reference oil price scenario up to $70/b in 2017$ and then remains at that level long term. Second I noticed that a scenario with such an oil price assumption sees tight oil output fall in 2022 so the scenario was revised with oil prices rising from 70 to 80 per barrel from 2022 to 2024 and then remaining at that level until 2028. The BNP Paribus analysis suggests that EVs will have cut significantly into oil demand by 2022 to 2025 so I assume oil prices fall to $20/b over the next 10 years.
Scenarios below.

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USA and World Oil Production

The USA data below was taken primarily from the EIA’s Petroleum Supply Monthly while some were taken from the EIA’s Monthly Energy Review.

I have some bad news to report. The EIA no longer published World production data or Non-OPEC production data. This data had previously been published in the Monthly Energy Review.

The Monthly Energy Review’s data was one month behind the Petroleum Supply Monthly but now they jumped two months and are now one month ahead of the Petroleum Supply Monthly. They now publish the previous month’s numbers, June in this case, but now publish only US data. The Petroleum Supply Monthly is unchanged.

EDIT: The Petroleum Supply Monthly does publish some, incomplete, world data… through April or one month behind their USA data. I will use that with an explanation and comments next month.

The closest I can come to World oil production, through June, is the combined production of OPEC, Russia, the USA, and Canada. This is 70% of total World Production.

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