The Oil Drum

IMO, Texas serves as a good model for at least the mature portions of Russia.  The lightly explored basins are another matter, but in fact, there is at least one large and very lightly explored basin in Texas, that has evidence of oil and gas, but not any real commercial production yet--the Marfa Basin.  

In any case, when Texas peaked in 1972, and when oil prices went up by 1,000%, we had the mother of all drilling booms--and we succeeded in increasing the number of producing wells by 14% over a 10 year period, which corresponded to a production drop from 3.5 mbpd to 2.5 mbpd.  The smaller fields could not make up for the declines in the Big Old Fields like East Texas.

The severe production drop in Russia starting in 1989 corresponded to the 50% of Qt mark AND to the political problems resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union.   A lot of the fields were able to get some "rest."  And IMO, most of the rebound in Russian production has been a result of the fields making up for what was not produced in the Nineties.  

In fact, the East Texas Field itself might be a good model for Russia.  The first peak was in the Thirties.  Production dropped when the Texas Railroad Commission (TRRC) stepped in and curtailed production--because oil prices had dropped to 10 cents per barrel.   The second (lower) peak was in 1972, following a steady increase for 10 years.    East Texas then began a terminal decline.  The point is that the second peak did not correspond to any "new" oil being found--the field was just making up for what had not been previously produced.   The TRRC is to the East Texas Field as the post-Soviet collapse is to Russia.  Granted, in both cases better technology was applied, but these are just incremental increases in URR.  Today, the East Texas Field is producing 1.2 mbpd of water, with a 1% oil cut.  Technology can't do much for a field that was watered out.

The Hubbert Linearization (HL) method accurately predicted--using only 1984 and earlier data--96% of post-1984 Russian production, and the HL method is predicting that Russian production--at least Russian production in existing fields--will soon start showing a double digit annual decline rate, which is also implied by the P/Q intercept.   The recent dramatic slowing of the year over year growth rate suggests that the decline will begin this year, which is again implied by the fact that Russia is getting close to catching up to where production should be based on the HL model.

History suggests that the smaller fields yet to be found in mature areas won't make much of a difference.  The problem with the lightly explored basins is timing. It takes a lot of time, expertise and capital to put large new fields on line.  Soon, Russia should start showing annual declines  in the 500,000 bpd to one mbpd per year range.

All of this gets back to my original concern about net export capacity.  Just look at all the gradually leaking internal reports about production declines in Big Old Fields in exporting countries--Burgan, now Cantarell.   I think that we are facing the prospect of severe cutbacks in net export capacity--probably starting this year.