EIA insisting on plateau

Average daily oil production, by month, from EIA and IEA, together with 13 month centered moving averages of each line, recursed once. Click to enlarge. Believed to be all liquids. Graph is not zero-scaled. Source: IEA Oil Market Reports, and EIA International Petroleum Monthly Table 1.4. The IEA line is taken from Table 3 of the tables section at the back of the OMR in the last issue for which the number for that month is given; last two points in purple are at an earlier stage of revision that the rest of the graph.

The EIA came out with the latest International Petroleum Monthly, which has data for May. As you can see above, the divergence with the the IEA continues to get more pronounced - the EIA moving average graph is dead flat, with none of the upward creep of the IEA curve.

If we average the two data sources in an attempt to determine the peak month:

IEA and EIA data averaged together (with centered moving average). NB data is only from Jan 2004 to May 2006. Click to enlarge. Believed to be all liquids. Source: IEA Oil Market Reports, and EIA International Petroleum Monthly Table 1.4. The IEA line is taken from Table 3 of the tables section at the back of the OMR in the last issue for which the number for that month is given.

Right now, May 2005 is the winner, but December 2005 and April 2006 are statistical ties. Minor revisions and changes to methodology could very easily change which is exactly the winner (indeed it was December 2005 for a while). But anyway, the oil industry doesn't seem to quite be able to tip it past the 85mbpd mark (on a combined agency basis) for the time being.

Finally, some folks expressed interest in just looking at crude plus condensate (ie real honest-to-God oil, rather than including natural gas liquids, biofuels, CTL, etc, etc). The EIA tracks that in Table 1.1, and here is the plateau in that:

Global crude and condensate production from Jan 2002 to May 2006, together with 13 month moving average, recursed once. Click to enlarge. Source: EIA International Petroleum Monthly Table 1.1c.

As you can see, the basic plateau shape is just the same.

See here, for more background on these plateau posts if you haven't been following them.