The Oil Drum

Just to give you a little puzzle for the vacation, I am adding the table that shows the number of new wells, the number of producing wells and the crude oil production for the OPEC countries, below the fold. This should be read in conjuncture with the table on oil produced per well, that is posted below.

I do this in part, so that you can have those numbers when reading the predictions being made for Saudi Aramco production, and how they are going to get it (thanks to Energy Bulletin for the pointer).

When you take this with the average amount of oil each well adds, then you can see how much, without that addition, the production from each country would have been.  Which should give some idea of the rates at which production would otherwise be declining.  That was the basic theory, but since you have to allow for when wells came on stream, and such factors, it did not prove the easy task I thought it might be.  But if you are looking for something to do . . . .

If one goes to the OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin there are a couple of additional tables, one listing the amount of crude produced each year, and one listing the number of producing wells in the country at the time.  Now this latter includes those that are flowing and those that are on artificial lift (which usually means at the stripper level), but if one takes the two numbers and divides one by the other, then the values obtained can be tabulated, to update the table I presented the other day.

There are a couple of comments, however, that make these numbers only a guideline.  Firstly there is a big difference in some countries between the flowing and the artificial lift.  The obvious example is Indonesia, where the ratio is around 9:1 for artificial lift.  This had significantly lowered the oil/well numbers relative to those that Matt Simmons quoted.

The second difference relates to Saudi Arabia.  The confusion there relates to the Neutral Zone, between SA and Kuwait.  The oil for this is shared, and the share shows up in the production of each country.  However the number of wells and rigs are separated out for that zone.  I included them in the Saudi number - since SA is tagged to the zone in the table, but it may not be totally accurate.  But you know the assumption.