Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Eagle Ford, Permian Basin, and Bakken and Eagle Ford Scenarios


Increased oil output in the US has kept World oil output from declining over the past few years and a major question is how long this can continue.  Poor estimates by both the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) for Texas state wide crude plus condensate (C+C) output make it difficult to predict when a sustained decline in US output will begin.

About 80 to 85% of Texas (TX) C+C output is from the Permian basin and the Eagle Ford play, so estimating output from these two formations is crucial.  I have used data from the production data query (PDQ) at the RRC to find the percentage of TX C+C output from the Permian (about 44% in Feb 2015) and Eagle Ford plays (40% in Feb 2015).  Dean’s estimates of Texas C+C output are excellent in my opinion and are close to EIA estimates through August 2014.  I used EIA data for TX C+C output through August 2014 and Dean’s best estimate from Sept 2014 to Feb 2015.  By multiplying the % of C+C output from the RRC data with the combined EIA and Dean estimate, I was able to estimate Eagle Ford and Permian output.  The chart below shows this output in kb/d.