[kenberthiaume]

Up from 2.85 m now.

Interesting. I thought they were "post peak"? 6 years from now not only do they plan to not have lower production but 35% higher? Wow.

[ROCKMAN]

So from 2004 thru 2012 Kuwait production has been rather flat around 2.5 million bopd

http://www.ogj.com/content/dam/ogj/prin ... JxAL02.jpg

Yet during this period oil prices were volatile but increased from $35/bbl to over $100/bbl and yet Kuwait didn't increase production. And now that prices have dropped 20% Kuwait plans to increase production by 60% to take advantage of prices that are lower then when they held production flat in recent years.

Makes perfect sense to me. LOL.

[DesuMaiden]

I doubt this will ever happen as they have already peaked in oil production.

[Graeme]

Solar energy a hedge against oil price volatility

Solar steam generation technology is a good way to hedge against oil price volatility as it addresses much of the cost of heavy oil production, said Rod MacGregor, CEO and President of GlassPoint Solar, Kuwait. In an interview with Kuwait Times yesterday on the sidelines of a roundtable organized by GlassPoint Kuwait at the Hilton Resort Kuwait, MacGregor said, “heavy oil production is an integral part of achieving Kuwait’s 2020 and 2030 strategies”.

“Planned thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects in north and west Kuwait stand to be some of the largest steam flooding projects in the world and will require burning significant amounts of imported natural gas or costly fuel oil. By deploying GlassPoint’s solar steam generators to extract Kuwait’s heavy oil reserves, the country can significantly reduce its reliance on imported energy,” he said.

“One thing the history teaches us is that the oil market is always volatile. But the price of sunshine does not change as it is free. Once you install the solar steam generator, the cost of production does not go forward. So it is a good hedge against the volatility in oil prices,” MacGregor pointed out. “If you look at the operating cost of running a heavy oilfield, you see that 60 percent of it is fuel cost. So, solar technology addresses much of the cost of heavy oil production. More importantly, the country will be able to withstand much of the oil price shocks,” he added.

According to MacGregor, oil operators worldwide deploy EOR to boost well productivity by up to 300 percent. When you use oil, you have to burn about 23 percent of a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of heavy oil. So it is neither economically nor environmentally attractive. Then the next option is to use natural gas which the country has to import. “By replacing gas-fired steam generation with solar, we can reduce EOR gas consumption also by up to 80 percent. The gas saved can be redirected to higher value uses such as LNG export, industrial development and power generation,” he said.

kuwaittimes

[Subjectivist]

Up from 2.85 m now.

Interesting. I thought they were "post peak"? 6 years from now not only do they plan to not have lower production but 35% higher? Wow.

Here is the thing though, since April 2015 Kuwait oil production has dropped by 100,000/bbl/d.

image.jpeg

[ROCKMAN]

Sub - Perhaps back to a problem we discused long ago: what is PO... exactly? Is it at the max rate that can be produced or a rate less then the max that is chosen to produce. IOW is the increased Kuwait rate from new reserves or are the just pumping previous discoveries harder? Or a combination.

I search for new Kuwait oiooiol fields and found only one from last summer:

"Kuwait has made a new discovery of light crude. The new field, located in Jathathil, is expected to "constitute an important addition to the company's capacity production capacity and country's reserves from light crude and gas", it said. Kuwait has an estimated 102 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
It currently produces 3 million barrels per day and aims to raise its production capacity to 4 million barrels per day by 2020."

An interesting stat from their numbers: 102 BILLION bbls of reserves and maybe 4 mm bopd by 2020. So they think they can produce 4 mm bopd for the next 70 years? And that assumes no decline in that rate until the 102 billionth bbl is produced. So given the decline rate of fields Kuwait feels its existing fields will produce for much longer then 100 years. That would be quite a feat.

Of course they may be motivated a tad to pump harder and exaggerate its reserve base: Kuwait is considering following Saudi Arabia by partially privatising its state-run oil industry. An IPO would generate needed billions for the government. Maximising proceeds, though, will mean ceding control of the crude still in the ground.

Seems odd to be willing to give up a portion of 100+ years of oil production to just pay some current bills. LOL.