I Knew The Bakken Roughnecks Were Good; I Did Not Know They Were This Good -- December 7, 2015

Rig productivity, yearly update, EIA:

Full report at this pdf.

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US Shale Oil Output To Fall 116,000 BOPD In January 

Updates

December 8, 2015: Reuters also reports same story --

U.S. shale oil production is expected to fall by more than 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) in January from the March peak, according to a U.S. government forecast on Monday, on the back of a global glut that's slashed oil prices to a near seven-year low.

Total output is set to decline by just over 115,000 bpd to 4.86 million bpd in January compared with December, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's drilling productivity report. Bakken production from North Dakota is set to fall 27,000 bpd, while production from the Eagle Ford is expected to fall 77,000 bpd. In the Permian Basin in West Texas, production is forecasted to rise by 14,000 bpd, data show.

Original Post

 

The Oil & Gas Journal is reporting:

Crude oil production in January from seven major US shale plays is expected to drop 116,000 b/d to 4.86 million b/d, according to the US Energy Information Administration’s latest Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The agency last month projected a 118,000-b/d decline for December.

The DPR focuses on the Bakken, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Marcellus, Niobrara, Permian, and Utica, which altogether accounted for 95% of US oil production increases and all US natural gas production increases during 2011-13.

I find that quite incredible. Even if the Bakken were to drop 100,000 bopd, the Bakken would still be producing in the neighborhood of one million bopd, and yet the total US shale output is expected to fall about 120,000 bopd, and most of that from the Eagle Ford.

Consistent with the trend since shale oil production began falling last spring, the Eagle Ford is expected to represent a bulk of the decline, down 77,000 b/d to 1.2 million b/d. EIA also projects the Bakken to drop 27,000 b/d to about 1.1 million b/d, and Niobrara to drop 24,000 b/d to 344,000 b/d.

Note: if the Eagle Ford falls as much as projected, and the Bakken holds its own, it's very possible the two fields could be about equal in production. It would be interesting to opine why that should be.

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Really? That Was Easy!

The New York Times is reporting:

Industrial emissions of greenhouse gases rose only slightly in 2014 and appear to be on track to decline in 2015, according to new data that raise the possibility that a period of rapid global emissions growth may be coming to an end.

The decline of 0.6 percent projected for this year, should it come to pass, would be highly unusual at a time when the global economy is growing. The projection contrasts sharply with emissions growth that averaged 2.4 percent a year over the last decade, and sometimes topped 3 percent. 

The new figures were released at the climate conference here by the Global Carbon Project, a collaboration that studies emissions, and published simultaneously in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Past emissions declines have usually been linked to economic distress, such as the global financial panic of 2009 and the Russian economic meltdown of the late 1990s.

The new figures suggest that there is a chance that global emissions have already peaked and may be starting a long-term decline, experts said Monday, which would be an important inflection point for the international effort to limit the risks of global warming.