Saudi Oil Production Up 450kbd in June

At least according to the OPEC MOMR out this morning.  Well, well, well – maybe we really are going to see 10mbd in July, notwithstanding my increasing scepticism.  Or then again, who knows?

The graph above shows five different estimates of Saudi oil production (left scale) with the average being the heavy black line.  The red line (right scale) is the oil rig count in country according to Baker Hughes.

KSA is now back up to the oil production level immediately before the great recession.  Historically, they have never maintained this level very long, yet alone gone beyond it.  It will be interesting to see if they can now do so.  (They brought on a couple of mb/d of new projects in the period 2005-2008, but some of us think a lot of that might have only offset declines in older fields).

Early Warning