OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin + MOMR

The August OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with the OPEC production numbers for July 2014. There were no big surprises and only small revisions in the June data.

The OPEC 12 was up  166,000 barrels per day. The increase was due to some Libyan oil coming back on line.

Libyan crude only was up 206 kbd to 438 kbd. Libya was up and down all the month of July and is now down again. From the Wall Street Journal: Risks Remain to Libya’s Oil Supply Despite Reopening of Ports, Fields Behind a pay wall but accessible via Google.

Following an end to protests by a local ethnic group at the country’s largest oil field, called Sharara, Libya’s oil production surged to a five-month high in mid-July to about 600,000 barrels a day—one third of which came from Sharara…

A week after the fighting broke out Libya’s state-owned National Oil Co. acknowledged the country’s output had fallen back by around 100,000 barrels a day.

Iraq is right back where it has been for the past two years, dropping to 3,058 kbd. Going in the wrong direction since hitting a new all time high of 3,477 kbd in February.

Saudi Arabia is not doing much of anything, moving sideways for the past 10 months. Saudi’s crude only production now stands at 9,813 kd/d.

Updated charts of all 12 OPEC nations can be found on the OPEC Charts page.

OPEC came out with their Annual Statistical Bulletin a few weeks ago. Here are a few stats and charts from that report.

Proven reserves below are in million barrels. (Add 6 zeros to all numbers.)

Saudi Arabia drilling rigs were 98 in 2010 and 148 in 2013, an increase of 50.

All so-called “proven” reserves should be taken with a grain of salt. They are just guesses at best and blatant lies at worst. Proven reserves, because they are mostly fiction, cannot and should not be used as any kind of indication of any nation’s future production potential.

The above charts make my case. Discoveries peaked in the 1960′s and have been falling ever since. Yet proven reserves have grown by leaps and bounds since then with less and less oil being found every year.

OPEC chose to include the Venezuela Bitumen in as part of world proven reserves but not the Canadian Tar Sands. This only proves that they select what they wish to count or not to count.

This is OPEC new wells completed by year. Kuwait had the most last year. “Project Kuwait” which had been on the books for over a decade finally got underway in earnest in 2010. It is interesting to note that Venezuela, last year, completed way less than half the wells they completed in 2011.

Venezuela has by far the most producing wells and Ecuador, OPEC’s smallest producer, has the second most producing wells. Saudi comes in a close third.

This is cumulative production of all OPEC countries in thousand barrels. Between 2000 and 2013 Saudi produced 41.6 billion barrels and their proven reserves increased slightly. OPEC Middle East nations have magic oil. For every barrel they pump out of the ground another magically takes its place.

Combined OPEC nations have a population of 438 million. Algeria 38.3 million, Angola 19.2 million, Ecuador 15.8 million, Iran 77.1 million, Iraq 35.1 million, Kuwait 4 million, Libya 6.3 million, Nigeria 172.3 million, Qatar 2 million, Saudi 30 million, UAE 8.5 million and Venezuela 30 million.

And lastly the exchange rate versus the US dollar. We can see that Iran has a runaway inflation rate as does Venezuela. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have their currencies pegged to the dollar and Ecuador does not bother with any pegs, they just use the US dollar as their national currency.  In 2000, in order to stabilize the economy, the Ecuadorian government voted to adopt the U.S. dollar as the official currency.

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