[Pops]

some charts I made from EIA C+C data. Note: I plotted US tight oil and the balance of US production separately, I estimated "US Tight" as simply all the increase in TX and ND production over the period.

First, all countries sorted by increase '05-'13




Countries with increase over 100m bopd '05-'13. Note that some countries shown now have YoY declines (perhaps economic in response to US tight)




US tight oil Estimate vs Rest o the World

[rollin]

Great charts, Pops. does not give a lot of confidence in future oil production rise though. Your right that the world is flat and we are sailing toward the legendary edge of the world, full sheets to the wind.

I notice that the individual countries all have negative slopes until the chart reaches Russia and above.
Is US minus tight oil still decreasing in production?

[Pops]

Thanks Rolin.
[edit for real numbers] 63 countries are declining and 36 increasing.

That second chart shows the dozen or so countries that have increased production more than 100m bopd over the last 8 years. Of those, Angola, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Qatar, Kazakhstan and India all saw lower production in the last 12 months.

[Pops]

I'll try that Pete.

[Pops]

So here is a chart showing ALL the countries increasing production the past 8 years even if by just a barrel. Plus Brent $/bbl




And one more, Same everything but sorted by total volume (except US Tight still at top)

[dcoyne78]

Hi Pops,

Very nice charts.

I have estimated shale oil increase in output from 5/2005 to April 2013 from the Permian, Bakken, and Eagle Ford using a combination of EIA and TRRC data. The increase in output is about 2.1 MMb/d from these three basins over the period covered by your charts. (I use TRRC data to find the proportion of total TX output from EFS and Permian and then multiply by EIA TX data to approximate EFS and Permian output, Bakken comes from NDIC and Montana based on Montana state data.)

It is interesting that this matches the 2.2 MMb/d increase in World C+C output almost exactly over the same period, I suppose the increase in Canadian output of 1.3 MMb/d over this period can be thought of as offsetting declines in Mexico (970 kb/d) and elsewhere.

DC

[Pops]

Thanks DC. Wow, you put much more effort into it than I did but surprisingly my simple guess (all the increase in TX & ND since they started increasing) works out to 1,928 MMb/d in April!

According to EIA data, world oil production over the period increased by 1,976mmb/d. Pretty close.

This is why I've been saying for a while now that the world is flat except for 14 counties in the US. A strange time for some to be dancing on the grave of PO.


You wouldn't happen to have put together the tight oil data by month would you? I'll send a PM with my email if you wouldn't mind sharing...

[ROCKMAN]

Great work, chaps. The increase in global oil prices is, of course, global. And yet your analysis reveals a very asymmetric response. Because the US was blessed with the only unconventional oil reserves? Maybe but I suspect not. We do have a very disproportionate share of the infrastructure. But Halliburton is ready to ship what anyone needs anywhere on the planet.

For all the faults of our free market hydrocarbon development system it is IMHO why such huge increases in oil production has been concentrated in so few counties. The combination of small independent companies maintaining a solid base of stripper production and the efforts of the pubcos Little Oil and Big Oil companies keeps us in the top three oil producer's club. The little oil gobble up the shale plays because their survival depends on those trends. And Big Oil chasing the Deep Water because the have the big capes and also have the same survival impulses.

High oil prices don't alone explain the US boost. Expectations of a similar global response may not be met. Deep Water development may eventually show a global boost but the time lag between discovery and first production takes so long it might take the better part of the next 5 to 10 before we see it.

[ralfy]

Thanks, Pops.

[Plantagenet]

High oil prices don't alone explain the US boost. Expectations of a similar global response may not be met.

If there is oil to be had, it will be had. All the oil will be used

Other countries will adapt US technology and frack their shales---its just going to take a little longer outside the USA.

What POPs charts show us is that shale oil is having an important impact in the USA, but its not very large in the overall scheme of global oil production.

[Pops]

I should have mentioned, Matt at crudeoilpeak.info did a chart like these last year and I just recreated them to update and I think it was David Huges (ShaleBubble.org) who quoted the "14 counties" bit... credit where it's due.

Anyway, when I look at those what I see is a little pimple on top of the peak, the cherry on top of the sunday, the last click of the chain at the top of the ride. I'm sure others see salvation, or ruination maybe if it prolongs the human "plague". Some, sadly enough, see only one more day of winning the ultimately unwinnable argument with the doomers.

--
I wasn't going to post any "prediction" charts on this thread - but - I said elsewhere that I'd never seen a prediction that looked like the reality of the flat plateau appearing in those charts but in fact it fits perfectly with the first "guru" prediction I took to heart. Laharrere in 2005 said "the peak will be a bumpy plateau" and posted this chart as part of a presentation to the ASPO:


http://www.mnforsustain.org/images/oil_ ... _fig50.jpg


Turns out he's just updated it and if you look there at the tops is the little plateau (h/t Ugo Bardi @ cassandraslegacy)


(The original is on ASPOFrance somewhere)

--
The thing I liked about Laharrere was his point that the URR numbers are guesses and anyone who gives them more than one or 2 digits of accuracy are deluding themselves as to their own omnipotence.


--

I've also posted this one before but it needs to go here as well, I'd like to see DC's numbers used to make one like it for all the US shales:



.

[ROCKMAN]

P – “Other countries will adapt US technology and frack their shales” You mean like how the hundreds of small independent oil companies in England, Poland and elsewhere are leasing millions of acres of privately owned mineral rights from very willing land owners. And where dozens of large public oil companies are desperate to drill anything that might ensure their survival. And like with all those national oil companies that are willing to give up their monopolies. And all those companies deploying the hundreds of $billion in equipment owned by the service companies in those countries needed to develop their shales.

You mean like that? LOL. That was my point: where on the planet is there a hydrocarbon development system that can duplicate what is being done in the US? Canada is probably the closest. After them who would be next on the list? It’s taken the better part of a 100 years for the US petroleum industry to evolve to the point where the higher oil price is allowing us to exploit the unconventional resources at such a rapid rate. I suspect it will take more than a few years before other countries can duplicate what we’ve done. And that’s only if they radically change their approach to petroleum development. A change we’ve yet to see even begin on any significant level. And if $100+ per bbl hasn’t made it happen yet what will?

Put another way: doesn't matter if a man on top of a 20 story burning building has no choice but to jump. He isn't going to evolve feathers fast enough. LOL. In a few years Poland may have more than enough incentive to try to develop their shales. But it will take more than high NG prices and a desperate need to make it happen very quickly.

[dolanbaker]

RM, it's also worth noting that in most countries the land owners have no mineral rights, all mineral rights belong to the state.

[ROCKMAN]

DB - Perhaps I was being too subtle in my smartass ways. That was one of the sarcastic points I was trying to make about sovereign ownership of minerals rights and the monopolistic control of state oil companies. I think a lot of Americans don't realize how very different resource development is in other countries compared to the US. If, for example, Poland had a basin equivalent in every way to the Williston Basin in N Dakota it's exploitation wouldn't look anything like what's going on with the Bakken today IMO.

[Keith_McClary]

The thing I liked about Laharrere was his point that the URR numbers are guesses and anyone who gives them more than one or 2 digits of accuracy are deluding themselves as to their own omnipotence.

"one or 2 digits of accuracy" on URR only moves the peak by a few minutes months. An important Peak Oil Fact which you refuse to include in the top 10 .

[ROCKMAN]

Keith – In another thread I was teasing one of our cohorts about using one decimal place in his estimate. Again it isn’t that a change of 0.1% might not represent a significant amount but it goes to the issue of accuracy you point out. The potential errors for an individual field with respect to EUR are huge. One hopes that when a very large number of fields are amalgamated the errors offset themselves. But that has not been my experience for the last 38 years. There’s a desire from all quarters to be optimistic.

Of course, I have an ingrained aversion to believing anyone’s numbers. My attitude was ruined in my first couple of years in the oil patch. As a new development geologist at Mobil Oil I was tasked with drilling the development wells off the newly installed platform in the GOM. Had much seismic control and the exploration dept drilled two expendable holes that found a series of productive sands. Then they simply extrapolated what they found with the seismic control to the other untested fault blocks. And applied what most would consider reasonable risk to reduce those reserve expectations. And those expectations were 25 million bo and 125 bcf.

And then I drilled the first 5 “low risk” development wells and they were all dry holes. The reduced the EUR from 25 million bbls to 1 million bbl and 125 bcf to 25 bcf. Obviously the estimates were way further off than one or two digits. In 38 years I’ve seen many wells with 6 to 10 years of projected commercial life deplete within a year or two. When one has all the data and is looking at a very small area and has 6 months to do the analysis it still very easy to come up with very wrong numbers. Which is exactly why folks who try to estimate large regional or global numbers avoid individual field analysis like the plague. Again the hope is that those huge potential individual field errors offset the high and low variances equally. Yet as I said I’ve never seen that happen as a result of inherent optimism in such efforts. Just pulling an unprovable number out of my butt I would say that 60% of all the wells I’ve analyzed failed to reach their EUR estimates with almost 40% or so coming close enough to count as accurate. Wells that exceeded EUR…about 1% at most.

Which, once more, is why most geologist will tell you 2 + 2 = somewhere between 3 and 5. It’s often more critical that you know what you don’t know than knowing what you do know.

[Pops]

The thing I liked about Laharrere was his point that the URR numbers are guesses and anyone who gives them more than one or 2 digits of accuracy are deluding themselves as to their own omnipotence.

"one or 2 digits of accuracy" on URR only moves the peak by a few minutes months. An important Peak Oil Fact which you refuse to include in the top 10 .

I refused? maybe we should review that.

Here's a chart of how little difference in peak a big difference in URR makes:



But I think the bigger point is not that a trillion barrels or 2 only makes a decade or 2 difference in the peak but that making concrete predictions based on "data" that everyone knows is a guess at best and outright fraudulent at worst is foolish. Unless you are just out to have an internet argument that is.

[dcoyne78]

Thanks DC. Wow, you put much more effort into it than I did but surprisingly my simple guess (all the increase in TX & ND since they started increasing) works out to 1,928 MMb/d in April!

According to EIA data, world oil production over the period increased by 1,976mmb/d. Pretty close.

This is why I've been saying for a while now that the world is flat except for 14 counties in the US. A strange time for some to be dancing on the grave of PO.


You wouldn't happen to have put together the tight oil data by month would you? I'll send a PM with my email if you wouldn't mind sharing...

I will post a link to where the data can be downloaded, the file will be called
"ustightoil.xslx", note that I am assuming that all of the increase in oil from the Permian basin is tight oil, which is probably not correct, there is not a good way of distinguishing the tight from conventional in the Permian using the RRC database (at least as far as I know). I was trying to check your assumption, by making other assumptions (all tight oil is from Bakken, Permian, and Eagle Ford Shale). It turns out our two different assumptions give about the same answer. I can try to put the data together, I just looked at end points to find the increase from May 2005 to April 2013 (most recent EIA data point). I thought one of your charts indicated May 2005 was the start, and the only EIA C+C data for the world I can find ends in April.

Perhaps Someone from Texas can comment on whether most of the increase from the Permian basin since 2005 is tight oil or whether there is a substantial conventional component.

DC