Random Look At Source Of Oil Production In The US -- August 28, 2015

Updates

Later, 11:52 a.m. Central Time: the story in Oil & Gas Journal -- a fascinating article with timeline of hurricanes and tropical storms and how they affected oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, from 2005 to 2015. In 2005, for example, pre-Katrina, 1.5 million bopd; trough due to Katrina, 0.5 million bopd, returning to baseline of 1.3 million bopd through 2008. Hurricane Gustave dropped production to 0.3 million bopd, subsequently rebounding to 1.75 million bopd and then waxing and waning to current 1.5 million bopd today. Hurricane Ida (2009), TS Bonnie (2010), Tropical Storm Lee (2011), Hurricane (barely) Isaac (2012), and Tropical Storm Karen (2013) resulted in very little disruption. No production was affected during the 2014 (last year's) hurricane season.

Original Post

 

This little nugget helps me immensely -- see the EIA "energy cookie" below. I assume off-shore oil for the US comes from West Coast (problematic); East Coast ("none");  Gulf Coast (decreasing); and, Alaska (stable to decreasing). (Actually the data was easily retrievable elsewhere -- the EIA note today didn't tell anything we didn't already know, but it gave us a chance to look at the tea leaves going forward.)

Alaskan North Slope oil production is decreasing, at best stable. California -- the tea leaves suggest production is not going to increase significantly. At $45 oil, operators are circling the wagons to focus on only the best plays (the Bakken, the Permian, and the Eagle Ford).

So, when I put this all together, it looks like bulk of US oil production comes from the three shale plays and the Gulf of Mexico. There's not a lot of slack.

Now the EIA "energy cookie":

Hurricane-related risk to total U.S. crude oil and natural gas production has decreased over recent years as the share of total U.S. production originating in the Gulf of Mexico has declined sharply. In 2003, 27% of the nation's crude oil was produced in the Gulf of Mexico; by 2014, that share had declined to 16%. The Gulf of Mexico's share of natural gas production has also declined from a high of 26% in 1997 to 5% in 2014. --- EIA

If I did the math correctly, the US produces about 8.7 million bopd (2014).

The Bakken produces about 1 million bopd which works out to about 11% of total US production. Which isn't a whole less than the 16% that comes from the Gulf of Mexico.

The Bakken, it seems is sort of the Tesla in the oil and gas industry: from almost "0" in 2007 to over 10% of the nation's production some seven or eight years later.