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Production Woes at Oil-Sands Giant Syncrude to Impact Full-Year Output

By Chester Dawson CALGARY, Alberta– Canadian Oil Sands Ltd., the largest owner of the giant Syncrude oil-sands project, said Wednesday that production of synthetic crude would be "minimal" for two weeks after a weekend fire at Syncrude’s main plant, and that the lost production would impact its annual output. The company halted production after a blaze on Saturday damaged equipment at its Mildred Lake strip mine’s crude processing facility in northern Alberta. The loss of some 200,000 barrels per day of output has contributed to a sharp spike in prices of Canadian synthetic oil this week. "Syncrude plans to implement a phased recovery strategy with minimal synthetic crude oil shipments and operating rates for the next two weeks, " Canadian Oil Sands said in a statement late Wednesday. Production is expected to return to more normal levels at the end of the month, it said. The company said that […]

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The World’s First Clean Oil Sands Project: An Interview With Dr. Gerald Bailey

After decades of exhaustive attempts to overcome the dirty reputation of oil sands, we finally have an environmentally-friendly and low cost method to tap into these vast resources in the state of Utah—good news both for Mother Nature and all oil and gas investors. MCW Energy Group’s CEO, former Exxon President of the Arabian Gulf region, Dr. R. Gerald Bailey, tells Oilprice.com in an exclusive interview that his hunt for an innovative technology that simultaneously makes money and cleans up the environment is over. The race to capitalize on Utah’s vast oil sands resources is on, and only the ‘clean’—both financially and environmentally—will survive. Coming hot off of the successful launch of clean oil sands operations in Utah, while other oil sands projects are under fire from protesters, Dr. Bailey discusses: • The difference between Utah and Alberta when it comes to oil sands resources. • How new technology […]

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U.S. tight oil production decline

Nevertheless, U.S. tight oil production continued to climb through April. It has fallen since, but the EIA estimates that September production will only be down 7%, or about 360,000 barrels/day, from the peak in April. Actual or expected average daily production (in million barrels per day) from counties associated with the Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken, and Niobrara plays, monthly Jan 2007 to September 2015. Data source: EIA Drilling Productivity Report. This is despite the fact that typically output from an existing well falls very quickly after it begins production. The EIA estimates that tight oil production from wells that have been in operation for 3 months or more has declined by 1.6 mb/d since April, as calculated by the sum of the EIA estimated monthly declines in legacy production from May to September. Legacy production change (month-to-month production change, in thousands of barrels per day, coming from wells in […]

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U.S. tight oil production decline

Number of active oil rigs in counties associated with the Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken, and Niobrara plays, monthly Jan 2007 to July 2015. Data source: Nevertheless, U.S. tight oil production continued to climb through April. It has fallen since, but the EIA estimates that September production will only be down 7%, or about 360,000 barrels/day, from the peak in April. Actual or expected average daily production (in million barrels per day) from counties associated with the Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken, and Niobrara plays, monthly Jan 2007 to September 2015. Data source: EIA Drilling Productivity Report. This is despite the fact that typically output from an existing well falls very quickly after it begins production. The EIA estimates that tight oil production from wells that have been in operation for 3 months or more has declined by 1.6 mb/d since April, as calculated by the sum of the EIA estimated […]

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Two New Canadian Oil Sands Projects Started Despite Price Pain

CALGARY, Alberta, Sept 1 (Reuters) – ConocoPhillips and Husky Energy Inc announced key milestones in bringing two new oil sands projects online on Tuesday, underlining how some producers in the high-cost sector are boosting production even as crude prices tumble. The two projects will add around 178,000 barrels per day to the 2.3 million bpd already being produced from the oil sands, the world’s third largest crude reserves after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers forecast in June that oil sands production to hit 3.1 million bpd in 2020. That forecast may be overstated however, as Imperial Oil has since delayed plans to expand its Kearl project by another 125,000 bpd. The start up announcements on Tuesday also come as around 900 oil company jobs were cut in Canada, 500 of those by ConocoPhillips, and the U.S. benchmark crude dropped more than 6 percent on […]

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New U.S. oil data shows lower 2015 production: EIA

Stacked rigs are seen along with other idled oil drilling equipment at a depot in Dickinson, North Dakota June 26, 2015. The U.S. oil industry pumped less crude than initially estimated this year, according to new government data that offered the clearest look yet at the impact of drillers’ retrenchment in response to collapsing prices. The downward supply revisions were "unambiguously" bullish for a global market awash with oil, said Credit Suisse global energy economist Jan Stuart, suggesting the oft-cited resilience of U.S. shale producers to lower crude prices might have been overstated. Oil prices surged by as much as $3 a barrel on Monday, with some traders citing the new data. The Energy Information Administration said its new survey-based output data showed the United States pumped a hair below 9.3 million barrels per day in June, down by 100,000 bpd from a revised May figure. The June figure […]

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Walking Oil Rigs Spur Cheaper, Quicker Drilling in Supply Glut

Have you ever seen an oil rig walk ? Some of the newest rigs can travel hundreds of yards to the next well under their own power, lurching along like 150-foot-tall robots on pneumatic legs that raise the equipment five inches at a time, nudging forward at about a foot per minute. While that sounds slow, it is faster and cheaper than dismantling a rig and trucking the parts to a new site nearby. More efficient drilling rigs that cost a third less than just a year earlier are changing the face of the U.S. shale industry, helping boost per-rig output in the four largest fields by at least 40 percent since the crude price plunge began in 2014. While helping producers pump more oil, the new rigs have a downside. Companies such as Helmerich & Payne Inc., Nabors Industries Ltd. and Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. that provide the equipment […]

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Monthly Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production

Beginning with the June 2015 data, EIA is providing estimates for crude oil production (including lease condensate) based on data from the EIA-914 survey. Survey-based monthly production estimates starting with January 2015 are provided for Arkansas, California, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Wyoming, and the Federal Gulf of Mexico. For two states covered by the EIA-914—Oklahoma and West Virginia—and all remaining oil-producing states and areas not individually covered by the EIA-914, production estimates are based on the previous methodology (using lagged state data). When EIA completes its validation of Oklahoma and West Virginia data, estimates for these states will also be based on EIA-914 data. For all states and areas, production data prior to 2015 are estimates published in the Petroleum Supply Monthly. Later in 2015, EIA will report monthly crude oil production by API gravity category for the individually-surveyed EIA-914 states. […]

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EIA: New U.S. Oil Data Shows Lower 2015 Production

NEW YORK, Aug 31 (Reuters) – The U.S. oil industry pumped less crude than initially estimated this year, according to new government data that offered the clearest look yet at the impact of drillers’ retrenchment in response to collapsing prices. The downward supply revisions were "unambiguously" bullish for a global market awash with oil, said Credit Suisse global energy economist Jan Stuart, suggesting the oft-cited resilience of U.S. shale producers to lower crude prices might have been overstated. Oil prices surged by as much as $3 a barrel on Monday, with some traders citing the new data. The Energy Information Administration said its new survey-based output data showed the United States pumped a hair below 9.3 million barrels per day in June, down by 100,000 bpd from a revised May figure. The June figure was also nearly 250,000 bpd below what the EIA had estimated a few weeks ago, […]

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Europe Oil Consumption Peaked in 2005

Fig 1: Western Europe oil consumption, oil prices in $2014 Total oil consumption peaked 3 times at around 14 mb/d: (1) In 1973, the 1 st oil crisis which was triggered by the Yom Kippur war. The following OPEC embargo was successful because US oil production had peaked 3 years earlier so the US could not increase production to offset OPEC’s reduction (2) In 1979, the 2 nd oil crisis which was caused by Iranian oil production peaking in the mid seventies and the following Iranian revolution, resulting in a global recession in 1982 (3) In 2005, at the beginning of the 3 rd oil crisis when global crude oil production had a peak and declined until 2007 3 main oil consumers Germany, UK and France The oil crises in the 70s brought down consumption by 2 mb/d (oil prices increased 10-fold) through both energy conservation and a recession. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple