Stories in topic "Supply/Production"
The Bakken Shale - Has it Moved the Oil Needle?
Posted by Gail the Actuary on November 2, 2009 - 10:00am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: bakken, bakken shale, williston basin [list all tags]
This is a post by Piccolo, a petroleum engineer working in the petroleum industry.
In April 2008, we published an initial assessment of the Bakken Shale and compared it to the USGS estimates of the resource: “The Bakken – How much will it help?” That piece covered production up to October 2007; the current article extends that analysis 18 months to March 2009. With this installment I would like to look at phases of development as they relate to geographical movement of the play, and discuss whether the Bakken is making an impact on total US production. In other words, has the Bakken moved the needle on US production?

Turning an Oil Well and Down-Hole Motors
Posted by Heading Out on November 1, 2009 - 10:05am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: downhole motors, drill bits, horizontal wells, rospo mare, tech talk, turbines [list all tags]
This is part of the series of tech talk posts on how to get fossil fuels out of the ground that appear here most Sundays. In this post, I talk about several innovations in drilling, including down-hole motors. Among other things, down-hole motors made it possible to turn tighter corners with the drill bit, enabling horizontal wells.
The last post in this series dealt with directional drilling, where I had mentioned the need to go back in time to the period where the then Soviet Government was developing the Volga-Ural basin in the Soviet Union, back in the 1950's. And I quote from John Grace's "Russian Oil Supply."
Drilling deviated wells and a couple of legal terms
Posted by Heading Out on October 25, 2009 - 10:44am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: autotrak, deviated wells, directional wells, rule of capture, tech talk [list all tags]

When times got tough each well owner would still produce all the oil possible, why? (Apart, that is from paying the interest on all the money borrowed to drill the well in the first place).
Oilwatch Monthly October 2009
Posted by Rembrandt on October 23, 2009 - 10:43am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: demand, eia, exports, iea, imports, joint oil data initiative, non-opec, oilwatch, opec, original, stocks total liquids, supply, world production [list all tags]
The October 2009 edition of Oilwatch Monthly can be downloaded at this weblink (PDF, 1.37 MB, 33 pp).

The Oilwatch Monthly is a newsletter that is available free of charge with the latest data on oil supply, demand, oil stocks, spare capacity and exports.
A summary and latest graphics below the fold.
Abqaiq Revisited - Some Geological Analysis of Potential Saudi Depletion
Posted by JoulesBurn on October 18, 2009 - 2:22pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: abqaiq, peak oil, satellite, saudi arabia [list all tags]
This is a repeat of JoulesBurn's post on Abqaiq from May 2008, which may be of interest to those reading Heading Out's post. -- Gail
Abqaiq, an aging super giant Saudi Arabian oil field, has yielded over 11 billion barrels of oil since it was discovered in November of 1940. Its past provides us with the poster child for easy oil. The first well flowed at 9720 barrels per day, a far cry from today's land finds where multiple horizontal laterals are necessary to coax lesser quantities from stingier reservoirs. But Abqaiq's more recent past paints a more muddled picture, as efforts to extract the remaining oil have produced mixed results. More advanced recovery methods have been successfully employed in some parts of the field, but these have likewise revealed unexpected geological complexities which have in turn hindered recovery in other areas. Many of the new challenges encountered in Abqaiq are relevant to the future prospects for other fields, particularly Ghawar and Khurais. This article will evaluate the development status of the field using satellite imagery to identify recent drilling in correlation with several recent technical reports on new developments and strategies for maintaining production.
Reserves and Production: A Simple Example (based on Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia)
Posted by Heading Out on October 18, 2009 - 10:48am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: abqaiq, oil production, tech talk, water flood [list all tags]
So far in this series of technical talks, I have tried to explain some of the pieces that have to be put together to get crude oil or natural gas out of the ground. I intend to go on with the series in the coming weeks, but thought that today I would put some of the different thoughts that I have talked about recently together. So I am going to talk a little about reserve calculations and production and will use an example to show how the numbers are derived. And again, let me stress that this is a very simplified example. It is also only somewhat fictionalized, as I shall comment at the end.
Let me start by assuming that I have a layer of rock that is 300 ft thick, five miles wide and thirty miles long.
Shale Gas Estimates Perhaps Optimistic - An Interesting and Worrying Talk at ASPO
Posted by Heading Out on October 14, 2009 - 10:08am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: arthur berman, barnett shale, fayetteville, haynesville shale, marcellus, natural gas, natural gas prices, shale gas [list all tags]
Unfortunately I have had to miss the ASPO Meeting in Denver this week, and so cannot provide the daily reports that I have written in the past. But I notice that at least one of the talks has already caught a significant amount of press, and that is the one by Arthur Berman on the gas production from shale deposits such as the Barnett, Haynesville and Marcellus.
There has been a considerable hype in the press about the value of the gas from these shales, and the ability that they provide to bring in an “Age of Natural Gas”. Commenting on the situation last year, the CEO of Chesapeake noted:
. . .the U.S. today consumes about 63 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day - in energy BTU equivalency terms, that’s 10.5 million barrels of oil per day, or about half of the amount of oil that the U.S. consumes each day. Of that 63 bcf per day of natural gas consumption, we import about 1 bcf in the form of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, and we import about 8 bcf per day from Canada. This means that we are about 98.5% self-reliant on natural gas supply from North America and about 86% self-reliant on natural gas supply from the U.S. Contrast that with oil, where we are only about 41% North American self-reliant and only about 27% self-reliant from U.S. sources.
Carbonates, Chalk and Oilfield Subsidence
Posted by Heading Out on October 11, 2009 - 10:33am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: carbonates, chalk, ekofisk, land subsidence, limestone, secondary porosity, tech talk [list all tags]
This is a part of the continuing series of technical talks that I post on Sundays, and which can be found by clicking on the tech talk link at the top of the main page. Gradually these are getting a little more technical, so I would suggest if you are new to these that you start at the beginning and work your way up.
Having recently written about sandstones and permeability, and then about water flooding, I want to go on, this time to talk about carbonate rocks, as the general topic and secondary porosity, with some comments at the end on formations in chalk and the problems that this can bring to places such as Ekofisk. (Added for clarity - when I talk about carbonates I mean calcium carbonate and the related rocks such as limestone, chalk and dolomite, to name but three.) I again want to emphasize that, life being what it is, the true situation is often a bit more complex than I describe in this simplistic overview, and that I am very grateful when folk give more specific information about some of their experiences in the field.
The Switch to Winter Gasoline and a Primer on Gasoline Blends
Posted by Robert Rapier on October 10, 2009 - 11:16am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: gas prices, gasoline, gasoline supplies, oil companies, original, refineries [list all tags]
Every year in late summer, you will start hearing references in the media about the conversion to winter gasoline, such as the following (originally in the Bradenton Herald, but the link is long dead):
Motorists can thank a mild hurricane season in the Atlantic for the lower gas prices, according to the American Automobile Association.
Other factors include the end of the summer driving season and a cheaper winter fuel mix.
Gas stations sell a special, more expensive fuel blend during the summer to cut down on smog during hot months. Stations nationwide will start selling a less-expensive winter fuel blend Friday, which could lead to even lower prices, analysts said.
So what does this mean, and why does it make winter gasoline less expensive?
Reserves and Resources
Posted by Heading Out on October 8, 2009 - 10:44am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: clean coal, natural gas, natural gas prices, reserves [list all tags]
In trying to estimate the size of the problem that will face the world as the available reserves of fossil fuel begin to decline, one has to make some assumptions about the size of the volumes that are available. It is a debate that can lead to people talking past one another if they make different assumptions about the size of those reserves. This holds true in discussions that dot the web sites of those that write about energy, whether writing about oil, natural gas, coal or uranium.
The issue that becomes important is the fact that the amount of oil, coal, natural gas or uranium that can be economically extracted varies with the price of the fuel.



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