OPEC has published their OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report with crude only production numbers for October 2015. The charts are “Crude Only” production and are in thousands of barrels per day.
OPEC 12 was down 256,000 bpd in October.
OPEC uses secondary sources such as Platts and other agencies to report their production numbers. I find these numbers far more useful than those reported by direct communication with the OPEC countries. Those numbers are political and usually highly inaccurate.
Algeria peaked in November 2007 – 2008 and has been in a steady decline since that point.
Angola has been holding steady since peaking in 2008 and 2010. Related: Oil Tankers Are Filling Up As Global Storage Space Runs Low
Ecuador appears to have peaked this year. It is likely production will be down, but only slightly, next year.
Iran appears to be poised to increase production when sanctions are lifted. But don’t expect too much very soon. After years of neglect, their infrastructure is in very bad shape.
Most of the 2014 to 2015 production change has come from Iraq.
This chart shows the change in the average production from 2014 to 2015. Of course we are only averaging the first 10 months of 2015 versus all 12 months of 2014. The data is in thousand barrels per day. Related: Oil Market Supply Imbalance Getting Worse, Not Better
Kuwait peaked in 2013 and has declined about 150,000 bpd since then. I believe 2013 will be the all-time peak for Kuwait.
Libya is struggling with their own Arab Spring. There is no way of knowing when, if ever, peace will come there. I think it extremely unlikely they will produce as much as 1,000,000 bpd within the next 5 years or so.
Nigeria is struggling with political revolution, but it appears they are in decline regardless of their political problems.
I believe Saudi is producing every barrel they possibly can. They will be lucky to hold this level for much longer. Related: Will U.S. Solar Suffer The Same Fate As Fracking?
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Qatar has lots of natural gas but their oil production has clearly peaked and is now in pretty steep decline.
From 2005 through 2010, the oil rig count in the UAE averaged around 12. In October, their oil rig count stood at 46, almost 4 times their average. They have managed to increase their production about 11 percent above their 2008 peak. I believe UAE production is about to follow Kuwait’s lead and rollover.
Not much can be said about Venezuela. Their conventional oil is in decline but their bitumen production is keeping production relatively flat.
OPEC has world oil supply peaking in June and July and declining by about 1 million bpd since then.
By Ron Patterson
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