Peak Oil Update - February 2007: Production Forecasts and EIA Oil Production Numbers


An update on the latest production numbers from the EIA along with graphs/charts of different oil production forecasts.

World oil production (EIA Monthly) and various
forecasts (2001-2027)
World oil production (EIA Monthly) for crude oil + NGL. The median forecast is calculated from 9 models that are predicting a peak before 2020 (Bakhiarti, Smith, Staniford, Loglets,  Shock model, GBM, ASPO-[70,58,45]). Click to Enlarge.

Executive Summary:

  1. Monthly production records are unchanged: 
    1. All Liquids: the peak is still July 2006 at 85.47 mbpd, the year to date average production in 2006 (11 months) is  84.59 mbpd, up 0.01 mbpd from 2005.
    2. Crude Oil + NGL: the peak date remains May 2005 at 82.08 mbpd, the year to date average production for 2006 (11 months) is  81.40 mbpd, down 0.03 mbpd from 2005 (11 months).
    3. Crude Oil + Condensate: the peak date remains May 2005 at 74.15 mbpd, the year to date average production for 2006 (11 months) is 73.48 mbpd, down 0.09 mbpd from 2005 (11 months).
    4. NGPL: the peak date remains February 2005 at 8.05 mbpd, the year to date average production for 2006 (11 months) is  7.92 mbpd, up 0.06 mbpd from 2005 (11 months).
  2. No major revisions on the previous monthly estimates in this month release. 
  3. Weak growth continues: November 2006 estimate for crude oil + condensate is 73.41 mbpd compared to 74.11 mbpd one year ago.

A French version is also available on TOD:Canada here

Notations:
  • mbpd= Millions of barrels per day
  • Gb= Billions of barrels (109)
  • Tb= Trillions of barrels (1012)
  • NGPL= Natural Gas Plant Liquids
  • CO= Crude Oil + lease condensate
  • NGL= Natural Gas Liquids (lease condensate + NGPL)
  • URR= Ultimate Recoverable Resource

EIA Last Update (November)

Data sources for the production numbers:

  • Production data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2006 (Crude oil + NGL).
  • EIA data (monthly and annual productions up to November 2006) for crude oil and lease condensate (noted CO) on which I added the NGPL production (noted CO+NGL).

The All liquids peak is still July 2006 at  85.47 mbpd, the year to date average production value in 2006 (11 months) is down from 2005 for all the categories except for the total liquids which now equals 2005 production. The peak date  for Crude Oil + Cond. is May 2005 at 74.15 mbpd (see Table I below).

World production (EIA data)
Fig 1.- World production (EIA data). Blue lines and pentagrams are indicating monthly maximum. Monthly data for CO from the EIA. Annual data for NGPL and Other Liquids from 1980 to 2001 have been upsampled to get monthly estimates. Click to Enlarge.


Category Nov 2006 Nov 2005 12 MA1 2006 (11 Months) 2005 (11 Months) Share Peak Date Peak Value
All Liquids 84.62 84.66 84.60 84.59 84.58 100.00% 2006-07 85.47
Crude Oil + NGL 81.45 81.63 81.42 81.40 81.43 96.25% 2005-05 82.08
Other Liquids 3.17 3.02 3.18 3.19 3.15 3.75% 2006-08 3.54
NGPL 8.04 7.52 7.88 7.92 7.86 9.50% 2005-02 8.05
Crude Oil + Condensate 73.41 74.11 73.54 73.48 73.57 86.75% 2005-05 74.15
Table I - Production estimate (in millions of barrels per day (mbpd)) for November 2006 taken from the EIA website (International Petroleum Monthly). 1Moving Average on the last 12 months.

Revision Pattern

The cumulative changes in production estimates are shown on Figure 2. The 2005 annual production for all liquids has been revised up by 0.5 mbpd since the first estimate has been issued. NGPL estimates increased by 0.25 mbpd in average. CO production has been revised down for the two first quarters of 2006.

Cumulative change in production numbers since first estimates are
Fig 2.- Cumulative changes in production numbers since first estimates are issued for each month. The red line indicates the average revision for the entire year. Click to Enlarge.


The share of CO is now only 86.75% of the total liquid production.


Share of each liquid category to the total liquid
Fig 3.- Share of each liquid category to the total liquid production. Click to Enlarge.




World oil production (Crude oil + NGL) and various
Fig 4.- World oil production (Crude oil + NGL) and various forecasts (1940-2050). The light gray box gives the particular area where the Figures below are zooming in. Click to Enlarge.


Business as Usual


  • EIA's International Energy Outlook 2006, reference case (Table E4, World Oil Production by Region and Country, Reference Case).
  • IEA total liquid demand forecast for 2006 and 2007 (Table1.xls).
  • IEA World Energy Outlook 2006 : forecasts for All liquids, CO+NGL and Crude Oil (Table 3.2, p. 94).
  • IEA World Energy Outlook 2005 : forecast for All liquids (Table 3.5).
  • IEA World Energy Outlook 2004 : forecast for All liquids (Table 2.4).
  • A simple demographic model based on the observation that the oil produced per capita has been roughly constant for the last 26 years around 4.4496 barrels/capita/year (Crude Oil + NGL). The world population forecast employed is the UN 2004 Revision Population Database (medium variant).
  • CERA forecasts for conventional oil (Crude Oil + Condensate?) and all liquids, believed to be productive capacities (i.e. actual production + spare capacity). The numbers have been derived from Figure 1 in Dave's response to CERA.


Production forecasts assuming no visible peak
Fig 5.- Production forecasts assuming no visible peak. Click to Enlarge.

PeakOilers: Bottom-Up Analysis

  • Chris Skrebowski's megaprojects database (see discussion here).
  • The ASPO forecast from the last newsletter (#71): I took the production numbers for 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2050 and then interpolated the data (spline) for the missing years. I added the previous forecast issued one year and two years ago (newsletter #58 and #46 respectively). There was no revision since August 2006.
  • Rembrandt H. E. M. Koppelaar (Oil Supply Analysis 2006 - 2007): "Between 2006 and 2010 nearly 25 mbpd of new production is expected to come on-stream leading to a production (all liquids) level of 93-94 mbpd (91 mbpd for CO+NGL) in 2010 with the incorporation of a decline rate of 4% over present day production".
  • Koppelaar Oil Production Outlook 2005-2040 - Foundation Peak Oil Netherlands (November 2005 Edition).
  • The WOCAP model from Samsam Bakhtiari (2003). The forecast is for crude oil plus NGL.
  • Forecast by Michael Smith (Energy Institute) for CO+NGL, the data have been taken from this chart in this presentation (pdf).


Forecasts by PeakOilers based on bottom-up
Fig 6.- Forecasts by PeakOilers based on bottom-up methodologies. Click to Enlarge.

PeakOilers: Curve Fitting

The following results are based on a linear or non-linear fit of a parametric curve (most often a Logistic curve) directly on the observed production profile:

Forecasts by PeakOilers using curve fitting
Fig 7.- Forecasts by PeakOilers using curve fitting methodologies. Click to Enlarge.

Production Growth

The chart below gives the year-on-year production growth (or decline) for each month. Growth has been weak (below 1%) most of the year but went back in positive territory since last July.

Year-on-Year production growth
Fig 8.- Year-on-Year production growth. Click to Enlarge.


Forecast 2005 2006 2007 2010 2015 Peak Date Peak Value
All Liquids
Observed (EIA) 84.56 84.59 NA NA NA 2006-07 85.47
Koppelaar (2005) 84.06 85.78 86.61 89.21 87.98 >2011 >89.58
EIA (IEO, 2006) 82.70 84.50 86.37 91.60 98.30 >2030 >118.00
IEA (WEO, 2006) 83.60 85.10 86.62 91.30 99.30 >2030 >116.30
IEA (WEO, 2005) 84.00 85.85 87.64 92.50 99.11 >2030 >115.40
IEA (WEO, 2004) 82.06 83.74 85.41 90.40 98.69 >2030 >121.30
CERA1 (2006) 87.77 89.52 91.62 97.24 104.54 >2035 >130.00
Lahèrrere (2006) 83.59 84.82 85.96 88.93 92.27 2018 92.99
Lahèrrere (2005) 83.59 84.47 85.23 86.96 87.77 2014 87.84
Smith (2006) 85.19 87.77 90.88 98.94 98.56 2012-05 99.83
Crude Oil + NGL
Observed (EIA) 81.45 81.40 NA NA NA 2005-05 82.08
IEA (WEO, 2006) 80.10 81.38 82.67 86.50 92.50 >2030 >104.90
ASPO-71 80.00 81.90 84.48 90.00 85.00 2010 90.00
ASPO-58 81.00 82.03 83.10 85.00 79.18 2010 85.00
ASPO-45 81.00 80.95 80.80 80.00 73.77 2005 81.00
Koppelaar (2006) 81.76 82.31 83.68 91.00 NA >2010 >91.00
Bakhtiari (2003) 80.24 80.89 80.89 77.64 69.51 2006 80.89
Skrebowski (2006) 80.90 81.42 82.59 87.32 NA >2010 >87.92
Smith (2006) 80.53 82.81 85.45 91.95 88.60 2011-02 92.31
Staniford (High) 77.45 77.92 78.31 79.01 78.51 2011-10 79.08
Staniford (Med) 75.81 75.94 75.97 75.52 73.00 2007-05 75.98
Staniford (Low) 70.46 70.13 69.71 67.92 63.40 2002-07 70.88
Loglets 81.12 82.14 83.02 84.65 83.26 2012-01 84.80
GBM (2003) 76.06 76.27 76.33 75.30 67.79 2007-05 76.34
Shock Model (2006) 80.76 80.43 80.01 78.27 73.74 2003 81.17
Constant barrels/capita 78.81 79.73 80.66 83.42 88.01 2050 110.64
Crude Oil + Lease Condensate
Observed (EIA) 73.65 73.48 NA NA NA 2005-05 74.15
IEA (WEO, 2006) 70.80 71.78 72.77 75.70 80.30 >2030 >89.10
CERA1 (2006) 76.49 76.89 78.60 82.29 83.83 2038 97.58
ASPO-71 73.10 74.45 75.87 78.00 72.00 2010 78.00
ASPO-58 73.00 73.80 74.65 76.00 69.50 2010 76.00
ASPO-58 72.80 72.56 72.25 71.00 63.55 2005 72.80
Deffeyes (2004) 69.81 69.81 69.71 68.90 65.88 2005-12 69.82
Table II. Summary of all the forecasts (figures are in mbpd) as well as the last EIA estimates.1Productive capacities.

Next update in March.

Previous Update:

January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006

Khebab@theoildrum.com