Straining To Keep Up

Here's production for the last 3 1/2 years of the top 10 publicly quoted oil companies, sourced from Petroleum Review who got it from Evaluate Energy.

Hat-tip to Vital Trivia who drew it to our attention. The Petroleum Review piece says:

For ten of the top 22 companies, and for four out of the five largest private companies, the first half of 2005 saw lower crude and NGLs production than in 2004. Ten companies also produced less in first half 2005 than they did in 2003, while nine companies produced less than in 2002.

Clearly, it is no exaggeration to say that the world's largest publicly quoted oil companies are now really struggling to hold production levels, with only a few managing to maintain their market share of global production.

Where was that 10 trillion barrels the IEA had again? I know I saw it around here somewhere...

Interesting that Beyond Petroleum is headed up while Willyoujoinus is headed down.
Me thinks they lost it in an accounting error!

Maybe Matt Simmons and our other favorite Oil Prophets might be right after all, and the media is just covering someone's backside.

As has been stated by others, there seems to be a real disconnect out there in mom and pop land.  Christmas is coming, the stores are filled with all the toys and gagets for folks to buy.  Why worry about lost oil? Prices have gone down didn't you see?  No worries spend it, no need to conserve, why worry hurricane season is almost over with, and all that other no worry be happy end of another great year in retail.

PS,  Even before Katrina I drove less than 10 miles a week, Down from 100's of miles a week.  But when I am out I don't see any reductions at all in the other folk's driving habits and they continue to build bigger better roads.

 

Most people rely on price signals to tell them to change behaviors because price signals, in a market that is freely exchanging accurate information, should theoretically encapsulate the expert knowledge about that commodity. The current price signals are not telling people to alter their behavior and they have not realized that they need to educate themselves directly on this issue.

Further, we also know the oil price market is manipulated for political objectives (to "stablize" the economy rather than let real decisions based on real data to play out properly), and further, we know that many producers have falsified data to various extents.

The net result is that the market is acting on false information and thus reaching bad conclusions. This is GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out - so people keep right on driving unaware of the storm brewing just beyond their horizons.

According to page one of the linked report, the combined oil  production of the "top 22" is only 16.7mb/d in 2Q2005, about 20% of the world consumption.

Most of these companies are indeed losing marketshare--no one could argue that.  But there's no connection between what that small part of the world market (which overall is still increasing production or holding steady) and IEA's mythical 10gb number.

The comment was tongue-in-cheek needless to say.  But these guys do matter a lot.  If you look at the latest megaprojects report, most of what's coming on stream in the next few years is deep-water and Caspian projects from the IOCs (plus Petrobras).  So if the IOCs cannot turn around the trends in the graphs above quickly, it will be a very big deal.  OPEC is not acting like it's going to save the day (either because it can't or it won't, depending on your political persuasion).
very interesting indeed! I see prices dropping at the pumps too, i am not seeing any changes in driving habits either. And the sheeple have seen gas go up before, and they have seen it go back down. But, while prices are dropping, the news media (mainstream) is starting to pick up on energy news, from CNN to Fox. Any business finance channel like bloomberg or CNBC are reporting prices and mergers or other oil and gas related infot, but not production data, However, the media knows the potential impact they share on professing any gloom and doom scenarios regarding energy, so they will continue to soften the blow with their choice of words and downplay energy importance till one day, someone will switch gears from "everythings just fine" and say "we have a big big problem". And it won't come from Matt Simmons. I am begining to think Matt is right, but why would he set a specific target price? rather than a price range?
To be fair, in his latest comment I believe he said something along the lines of expecting prices to double or even treble and since MSM gloms to the worst they did the treble multiplication for him.  It made for a more dramatic headline.
If anyone can find where Simmons has made a specific price prediction, please show me. I keep seeing people claim this, but I have never seen him make a firm prediction, just express possible prices in the event of certain situations.  Thanks
Do these figures imply that we have already peaked ?
Probably not. There's a lot of deep water oil supposed to come on in the next few years.
Hopefully none of that deepwater is in the GOM waiting for the next hurricane.
The PDF doesn't have all the data that the chart shows. There's only six quartly data points the others are annual and averages. Where did the data for that chart come from?
I expect Stuart used the annual averages and then quarterly averages.  Nothing wrong with that, just the resolution gets higher to the right hand side of the graph.
I made my own.  Did my own data extract from the first table in the PDF.

http://peakoil.com/post204693.html#204693

Correct - I just took the data right off the Petroleum Review article and plotted each point at the midpoint of the corresponding period (so 7/1 for years, and 2/15 for first quarer etc. It looked too busy with the symbols in so I took them out, or that would be clearer.
this is where i got my info regarding Simmons high oil price prediction.

 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9753233/

In a small way, this sensationalized headline proves, yet again, the tremendous power the MSM possesses to make someone look either really good or really bad at will.  (Anyone remember Howard Dean's Scream?) We live in a culture of manipulated images, not of truth.  I would guess that everyone who posts on theoildrum does so in part to gain a measure of relief from that - no matter what their political (or religious) persuasion.
I think there is another very important thing to keep in mind about the current lull of normalcy that has many oildrum posters (including myself) somewhat perplexed and nonplussed:  This may not yet quite be the winter where things start heading out of control in the direction prognosticated by e.g. Simmons.  Due to the many uncertainties and murkinesses in the supply picture, the lull and reprieve may wind up lasting a number of years.  But if that happens, it does not mean that the Simmons prognostication will not come true eventually.  

Also, the lull may be artificially extended somewhat in the powerful industrialized countries by the squeezing of third world nations out of the fossil-fuel consuming picture in various ways - such as has already happened in Zimbabwe, and in Zambia also, I believe.

Before being squeezed out of oil, gross mismanagement, the lack of a free press and consequent corruption in Zimbabwe and others in and out of Africa first squeezed food and other necessities out of their economies. Many resource poor countries have ample access to energy supplies, but these countries have, by and large, fairly reasonable levels of corruption and, in many cases, both a free press and at least a semblance of democracy. Great non-African cases in point are north and south Korea.
I didn't see Aramco on the list. I thought they were the world's biggest producers.
The criteria to be on the list is to be publicly traded.