Surge of New Permian Basin Oil to Feed Global Supply

Exports of the Permian Basin’s newest kind of oil are set to jump as production surges, exceeding the appetite of U.S. refiners. Sales of the new grade, known as West Texas Light, began in September, as explorers sought to separate out increasingly lighter and less sulfurous crude bubbling up from wells in West Texas and […]

The IEA’s Dire Warning For Energy Markets

Global energy investment “stabilised” at just over $1.8 trillion in 2018, ending three years of declines. Higher spending on oil, natural gas and coal was offset by declines in fossil fuel-based electricity generation and even a dip in renewable energy spending. China was the largest market for energy investment, even as the U.S. closed the […]

OPEC April Production Data

The data below was taken from the OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report. All data is through April 2019 and is in thousand barrels per day. The data is crude only, that is it does not include condensate. Total OPEC production hardly moved in April, down a mere 3,000 barrels per day. Algeria peaked in 2008 and […]

Is Deepwater In Permanent Decline?

No. At least according to a recent poll conducted during a presentation at the 2019 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas. The majority of poll participants attending the presentation, which focused on offshore deepwater, answered no when asked if they considered the segment to be in permanent decline. In a separate poll during the presentation, […]

Iran to sell oil in ‘grey market’ as US tightens sanctions

Iran has mobilised all its resources to sell oil in a “grey market”, a top official said, after the United States told buyers of Iranian oil – including China, India and Turkey – to stop purchases or face sanctions. Amir Hossein Zamaninia, Iran’s deputy oil minister, told state media on Sunday that Iran will continue […]

Iraq, Kurdistan To Discuss 50% Increase In Oil Production

The central Iraqi government will meet with its Kurdish counterparts soon to talk about oil exports from the now semi-autonomous region that tried to gain independence last year. Reuters reported, citing Iraq’s oil minister, Thamer Ghadhban, that the two sides will also discuss the increase of oil production from the fields around the northern city […]

Peak Oil, Abiotic Oil & EROEI: Real(ish)

Guest Seinfeld routine by David Middleton The plots of the Seinfeld TV show often revolved around trivializing important things and blowing trivial things out of proportion. While not a Seinfeld fanatic (I’m more of a Frasier fanatic), I thought the comedy routines were generally brilliant and quite effective. Peak Oil, abiotic oil and EROEI (energy […]

Saudi Arabia’s biggest oil field is fading faster than anyone guessed

It was a state secret and the source of a kingdom’s riches. It was so important that US military planners once debated how to seize it by force. For oil traders, it was a source of endless speculation. Now the market finally knows: in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest conventional oil field, can produce a […]

Iran Peddling 1MM Barrels of Oil Again

An Iranian exchange has offered investors as much as 6 million barrels of oil so far this year. Only a single deal closed, for the minimum 35,000 barrels. Iran’s oil production and exports have slumped after the U.S. reinstated sanctions last year, and new curbs are set to further restrict its exports. Exemptions for importing […]

In The Permian Basin, Natural Gas ‘Flaring’ Persists, With No Solution In Sight

The axiom, bigger is better may not apply to everything in Texas. For one thing, the Permian Basin is cranking out so much natural gas that producers are burning it in high volumes Bloomberg reports that at the end of last year, producers were burning enough fuel to power every home in Texas. Matt Smith, […]

‘Really smart guys’ push to make biggest oilfield even bigger

Standing at the center of the prolific Permian Basin, Scott Hodges explains how the future of the world’s largest oil field may very well depend on what he calls jokingly calls the “really smart guys.” Hodges, a 57-year-old manager with Occidental Petroleum Corp., runs a cluster of installations at the Hobbs oil field, where dozens […]

IEA: Saudi Oil Production Falls To Two-Year Low

Saudi Arabia’s crude oil production slumped to the lowest in two years as the Kingdom doubled down on efforts to boost prices, the International Energy Agency said in the new edition of its Oil Market Report. The country’s rate of compliance with the OPEC+ production cut agreement reached 153 percent, the IEA said, adding that […]

Norway refuses to drill for billions of barrels of oil in Arctic, leaving ‘whole industry surprised and disappointed’

The largest party in Norway’s parliament has delivered a significant blow to the country’s huge oil industry after withdrawing support for explorative drilling off the Lofoten islands in the Arctic, which are considered a natural wonder. The move, by the opposition Labour party, creates a large parliamentary majority against oil exploration in the sensitive offshore area, illustrating growing opposition to the […]

Peak Ghawar: A Peak Oiler’s Nightmare

Alternate title: No… “The biggest Saudi oil field is [NOT] fading faster than anyone guessed”… Part Trois: Why Peak Oil Is Irrelevant and the Perpetually Refilling Abiotic Oil Field Is Abject Nonsense Guest reservoir geology by David Middleton Saudi Aramco’s recent bond prospectus has generated a lot of media buzz, particularly regarding the production from […]

OPEC March Data and Saudi Report

The below OPEC charts were taken from data in the OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report. All data is through March 2019 and is in thousand barrels per day. There was another big decline in OPEC production in March, down 534,000 barrels per day. The decline was mostly Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iraq. Iran, Libya and […]

Aramco’s True Breakeven Price

Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, is by far the largest oil company in the world. The company produces around 13 percent of the world’s oil, but its business operations have been notoriously opaque for decades. It has often been stated that the company has plenty of low-cost legacy wells that drop […]

Norway Is Falling Out of Love with Oil

Western Europe’s biggest petroleum producer is falling out of love with oil. To the dismay of the nation’s powerful oil industry and its worker unions, the opposition Labor Party over the weekend decided to withdraw its support for oil exploration offshore the sensitive Lofoten islands in Norway’s Arctic, creating a solid majority in parliament to […]

We Can’t Stop Drilling for Oil, BP Says

You’ve seen the news headlines about global warming and how carbon-based fuels like oil are a huge piece of the problem. That’s not hyperbole. That’s scientific fact. If environmentalists had their way, we would stop using older energy sources today and rely entirely on renewables like solar and wind power. That’s a great dream, but […]

Michael Lynch: Declining Production At Saudi Arabia’s Largest Oil Field Is Not Cause For Concern

Saudi Aramco has now released its IPO Base Prospectus and the reaction has been varied and often confused. The headline was its $111 billion in profit, which many appropriately pointed out is not so much profit but rent. (See explanation below.) Second, the cost per barrel, put at $x, surprised many as seeming rather low. […]

Venezuela Oil Output Is Said to Drop by Half

Power failures that plunged Venezuela into darkness for much of March also briefly slashed the country’s crude production by half, according to people familiar with the situation. Rolling blackouts across much of the country that started on March 7 paralyzed most of the country’s oil wells and rigs, which have slowly come back online. Oil […]

Aramco’s Ghawar field had 58 bln barrels of oil equivalent

Saudi Aramco’s Ghawar field, the largest oilfield in the world, had 58 billion barrels of oil equivalent in combined reserves at the end of 2018, and 48.3 billion in liquid reserves, the company said in its bond prospectus on Monday. Aramco, the world’s largest oil producing company, said it expected international crude oil prices to […]

California’s Oil Industry Collapses Despite Shale Boom

Not that long ago, California was the second most vital U.S. oil producing state. Since peaking in 1985, however, output has plunged almost 60 percent to 460,000 barrels per day (bpd).  This collapse is made even more discouraging by the fact that total U.S. crude oil production has been soaring to record heights, up 140 […]

Saudi Arabia’s biggest oil field is fading faster than anyone guessed

Ghawar is able to pump a maximum of 3.8 million barrels a day — well below the more than 5 million that had become conventional wisdom in the market An oil field in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis say some of its reserves — about a fifth of the total — have been drilled so systematically […]

NEXT OIL DOMINO TO FALL? Mexico Becomes A Net Oil Importer

While Mexico suffered the bloodiest year of violent deaths in 2018, even bigger trouble may be ahead for the embattled country.  For the first time in more than 50 years, Mexico has become a net importer of oil.  This is undoubtedly bad news for the Mexican Government as it has relied upon its oil revenues […]

Shale’s Growing Pains Could Curb US Oil Production

The dramatic ramp-up in U.S. shale production is running into a combination of issues — technical and financial — that threaten to slow the pace of expansion, according to some of the industry’s biggest companies. Schlumberger Ltd. and Halliburton Co., two of the largest providers of oil services, said Monday there will be a double-digit […]

Texas Needs 11000 More Miles Of Pipelines

Texas will need an additional 10,950 miles of oil and gas pipelines to accommodate rising production over the years to 2050, an IHS Markit study quoted by S&P Global Platts has suggested. The Lone Star state is home to three of the most prolific oil and gas deposits in the United States, including the Permian, […]

The EIA’s Optimistic Outlook

Most of the data below is taken from from the EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook. The data through February, 2019 is the EIA’s best estimate of past production and all data from March 2019 through December 2020 is the EIA’s best estimate of future production. However in most cases February production is highly speculative so I […]

Michael Lynch: The Curious Incident Of The Oil Supply That Didn’t Decline

Interestingly, there are still peak oil advocates who think that we’ve reached peak oil now, despite the fact that shale oil production is still growing, OPEC+ has about 1.5 mb/d of production shut-in due to weak prices, while Venezuela, Libya, Iran and Nigeria are all experiencing difficulties that have closed down temporarily 3 mb/d or […]

Russia can become world’s top natural gas producer

With the biggest natural gas reserves on the planet, Russia could become the world’s number one producer of the fuel, according to Ben van Beurden, the CEO of Anglo-Dutch energy major Shell. The top executive says that rapidly increasing demand for natural gas has occurred due to the worldwide trend aimed at forcing out coal […]

How likely is an oil-led market crash?

There’s a bullish outlook for oil even though there are a growing number of potential factors that could undermine demand in coming years. Despite these problems from trade wars, Brexit and China’s slowing growth rate, the International Energy Agency (IEA) still sees global oil consumption rising 6% over the next five years. And it sees […]

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