Stories tagged with swing producer

Saudi production laid bare

Posted by Euan Mearns on March 19, 2007 - 10:00am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: opec, peak oil, production history, saudi arabia, swing producer [list all tags]

A couple of weeks ago I made a comment saying that we needed data on producing wells and drilling history in order to further analyse Saudi oil production. In answer to my wish Kyle posted a comment with this link to the OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin which contains all this information - well almost.

So is Saudi production about to nosedive?


Figure 1 Saudi Arabian average oil production per well. The average well flow rates are drifting down slowly from just above 6000 bpd in 1991 to just below 6000 bpd in 2005. No sign of a pending nosedive here!
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Saudi Arabia and that $1000 bet

Posted by Euan Mearns on March 7, 2007 - 11:00am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: oil production, saudi arabia, swing producer [list all tags]

First of all congratulations to Stuart for busting some records with his post "Saudi Arabian oil declines 8% in 2006" published on 2nd March. I was unavailable to comment that day but feel there are several cautionary observations that need to be made before jumping to any conclusion about the end of the oil age. If Stuart is right, and he may be, then the consequences may be dire.

In the last decade, monthly Saudi Arabian oil production has undergone cyclic decline on 4 occasions - 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2006. So how can anyone be sure that the present production decline signals a terminal slide in Saudi production?


Monthly oil production for Saudi Arabia reported by the International Energy Agency (eia) believed to be crude oil+condensate (C+C).

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