Robert Hirsch: Déjà Vu With a Twist?

The recent world oil supply/price decline situation looks very much like what happened in 1985-86, when the Saudis dramatically increased oil production, causing world oil prices to crater.  That Saudi action was the result of their having acted as swing producer in OPEC, which under those circumstances caused a progressive loss of theiroil market share.  […]

EIA C+C Data and Jean Laherrere on Reserves

The EIA just released their International Energy Statistics with world production numbers through October 2014. There were no big surprises in this report. World C+C production was up 731,000 bpd to 78,967,000 bpd. This is a new high. All the gain in the last few years has come from non-OPEC. Non-OPEC production was up 374 kbd […]

The hearty, hardy gas production of the US

It seems like only yesterday that big winter storms or other extreme weather events could curtail or shut natural gas production in the US. A winter storm and freezing temperatures in the Northeast or in the Southeast would prompt freeze-offs or shut-ins along pipelines. But perhaps no longer. When I joined Platts as a gas […]

Tech Talk – enjoy it while you can

It is perhaps an odd time to be writing about oil shortages. The price of gas in our town has just moved above $2 a gallon up significantly from the $1.64 it was at its recent lowest point, but still very reasonable. Debate still rages as to whether the global price of a barrel of […]

Libya Warns of Complete Oil Shutdown as Attacks Escalate

  Clashes in Benghazi Smoke rises from the port of the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi during clashes between forces loyal to the internationally recognised government and militias, on Feb. 14, 2015. Photographer: Abdullah Doma/AFP via Getty Images Recommended This Chart Shows Why the Number of Oil Rigs May Not Matter Anymore Libya’s state-run oil […]

Russian oil production to drop by 70000 barrels a day in 2015

Given the impact of sanctions, low prices and the absence of any large projects expected to come online, oil production in Russia will drop in 2015 by 70,000 barrels a day, according to a report from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. At the same time, production at Bashneft’s Arctic fields in the Nenets […]

Total Canadian oil production up 8 percent

The full-year 2014 crude oil production average for Canadian basins increased year-on-year, but there may be strains from low oil prices, federal data show. The National Energy Board released full-year production figures for 2014, showing a cumulative average of 3.8 million barrels per day, an 8 percent increase from full-year 2013. Total crude oil production […]

US oil output ‘party’ to last to 2020

The United States will remain the world’s top source of oil supply growth up to 2020, even after the recent collapse in prices, the International Energy Agency said, defying expectations of a more dramatic slowdown in shale growth. The agency also said in its Medium Term Oil Market report that oil prices LCOc1, which slid […]

Are the Saudis Scared to Cut Oil Production?

With the global oil market currently oversupplied to the tune of an estimated 2 million barrels per day, oil producer group Opec has struggled to formulate an effective strategy aside from “let the market sort it out.” For decades Opec played a price-setting role by increasing production to boost supply when prices were deemed too […]

OPEC’s Production and Outlook

The latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with all the OPEC crude only production numbers for January 2015. There were very little revisions in the December numbers this month. Total OPEC production of crude only was down 53,000 barrels per day in January to 30,153,000 barrels per day of crude only. Algerian production has […]

A Short Course on Hydraulic Fracturing

Hydraulic fracturing is little understood because fractivists have deliberately used “fracking” as an all-purpose term for the gas industry, but it’s simple. Well, how about some facts on hydraulic fracturing? We have been doing hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” here in Alberta, since the technology was established decades ago, with little or no discernible effect, other than […]

A lesson from the history of oil

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, BP CEO Bob Dudley took a bearish view on the price of oil, noting that the present feels like 1986, when oil slumped from $30 a barrel to $10 and did not recover until in 1990. “The fundamental supply and demand does remind me of 1986 a bit, where […]

Why we are at Peak Oil Right Now

In this life nothing is certain. Therefore I am not declaring, absolutely, that we are at peak oil, only that it is a near certainty. But I am putting my reputation on the line in making the claim that the period, September 2014 through August 2015 will be the year of Peak Oil. Below are […]

Lower 48 Oil Production Outlook Stable Despite Expected Near-Term Reduction in Rig Count

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, January Short-Term Energy Outlook. Note: Graph does not include production from Alaska and the Federal Gulf of Mexico. The sharp decline in oil prices over the last quarter of 2014, which has continued in January, is already having a significant effect on drilling activity in the United States, as shown […]

US Production and Imports

Even before the shale revolution got underway, US net imports were falling. The data below is from the Weekly Petroleum Status Report and is in thousand barrels per day. This chart shows net crude oil and petroleum products imports. Net imports peaked in 2006 and started to fall in earnest in 2008. They continued to fall […]

Early signs of the Bakken oil slow-down

Overview The state of North Dakota—home of the Bakken shale oil boom—reported recently that oil production there had held steady, despite that the number of new producing wells had dropped drastically. But as I found from digging into the data, the drop-off in well completions was not nearly as steep as North Dakota had said—and […]

South Sudan Oil Production Rises To 169,000 Bpd

South Sudan’s oil production has risen by about 9,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 169,000 bpd from December last year, petroleum minister Stephen Dhieu Dau said on Tuesday, despite sporadic fighting near oil-producing fields. Production has been slashed by about a third since fighting broke out in the world’s newest state in December 2013, with […]

Tight Oil Production Will Fade Quickly: The Truth About Rig Counts

U.S tight oil production from shale plays will fall more quickly than most assume. Why? High decline rates from shale reservoirs is given. The more interesting reasons are the compounding effects of pad drilling on rig count and poorer average well performance with time. Rig productivity has increased but average well productivity has decreased. Every rig used […]

Libya Producing 363,000 Barrels per Day

Oil output from Libya, where ports and oilfields have been shut due to fighting, has fallen to 363,000 barrels a day with exports at about 200,000, the oil minister appointed by forces in control of the capital Tripoli told Reuters. Two governments allied to armed factions are vying for control of Libya four years after […]

Colombia looks to reverse the drop in its oil production

Better terms. More hand-holding. Accentuate the positive. And promote unconventional and offshore energy. That’s the advice that Orlando Cabrales gives his former employer, the Colombian government, in its efforts to lure oil companies that lately have been turned off by the country’s mounting red tape, social unrest and oil field violence. Producer disenchantment was a […]

Robert Rapier: Why $50 Oil Won’t Last

In the past few weeks I have received numerous questions about the role of a “drop in demand” in the oil price decline. These questions are driven by many stories in the media that have referenced a drop in demand. There are two primary reasons given for this so-called demand drop. One is that years […]

Argentina: Best Candidate for Next Shale Boom?

A conversation about Argentine shale prospects is rarely loud enough to be heard. Instead, the oil and gas industry discusses at the length the outlook for U.S. shale. Of course, the key question about shale today is: how it will fare given the slumping price of oil? The answer is of critical importance to energy […]

Worldwide Drilling Productivity Report

The EIA publishes what they call a Drilling Productivity Report in which they claim that each rig is getting more productive, that is each rig produces just a little more oil each month than it did the previous month. But over the long haul, I find that the exact opposite is true. In every place in […]

Iran announces record gas production

Iran said on Saturday that it has been able to produce a total of 105 million cubic meters of sweet gas per day (mcm/d) from five prioritized projects in the country’s energy hub of South Pars from June 2013.     The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said the projects – phases 12, 15&16, and […]

Hype, Broken Promises, and Shales

The term shale revolution has been used so much that it almost has no meaning anymore. But were shales ever really the energy panacea promised or merely a self styled hype machine? Would the frenzy in drilling ever have truly taken off if it weren’t for cheap money? These are valid questions which have not […]

Pickens: Producers can’t keep drilling at $45 oil

Energy tycoon Boone Pickens predicted on Friday that oil prices would be back near $70 or $80 a barrel by the fourth quarter of this year. Oil producers in West Texas and North Dakota “can’t drill for $45 oil,” Pickens said on CNBC’s “Street Signs.” “In the last 30 days they’ve dropped 300 rigs…. You’re […]

OPEC Crude Oil Production, What’s Next?

The latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with OPEC production data for. The data is “Crude Only” and does not reflect condensate production. Also the charts, except for Libya, are not zero based. I chose to amplify the change rather than the total. All Data is in thousand barrels per day with the last data point December […]

Iraq Produces Record 4M Barrels per Day of Crude

Iraq produced a record of around 4 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in December, Oil Minister Adel Abdel Mehdi announced on Sunday. “It is the first time Iraq has achieved this,” Abdel Mehdi told a press conference alongside Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz. Abdel Mehdi also revealed plans to export 375,000 bpd […]

Gail Tverberg: This Is The Beginning Of The End For Oil Production

With the recent collapse in the price of oil, Gail Tverberg, returns to discuss the likely impact on the US shale oil industry, as well as the global market for oil. Gail is a professional actuary who applies classic risk assessment procedures to global resources: studying issues such as oil & natural gas depletion, water […]

EIA forecasts temporary peak in US crude output in May

US crude production is set to rise by another 300,000 barrels per day to a temporary peak in May, according to the US Energy Information Administration, before declining over the summer. The forecast is contained in the latest edition of the EIA’s closely watched Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). Most of the commentary on the STEO […]

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