Iraq Production Reached 3 Million Barrels per Day in February

According to MEES, Iraq production has passed the 3 Mb/d mark in February thanks to the opening of a single Single Point Mooring as part of the Basra terminal expansion:

Iraq plans to start the actual loading of crude in a week to 10 days, initially boosting oil exports through the country's south, which currently stand at about 1.7 million barrels a day, by 200,000 to 300,000 barrels per day, said Dhia Jaafar, the director-general of the state-run South Oil Co. The terminal's full capacity will be 900,000 barrels a day. src.

If confirmed, this is the highest production level since 2001 or even 1980.

World Production Update

The EIA, IEA and JODI have updated their numbers so it is time for a small update on some world production charts.

Figure 1. World oil production (EIA Monthly) for crude oil + NGL. The median forecast is calculated from 15 models that are predicting a peak before 2020 (Bakhtiari, Smith, Staniford, Loglets, Shock model, GBM, ASPO-[70,58,45], Robelius Low/High, HSM,Duncan&Youngquist). 95% of the predictions  sees a production peak between 2008 and 2010 at 77.5 - 85.0 mbpd (The 95% forecast variability area in yellow is computed using a bootstrap technique). The magenta area is the 95% confidence interval for the population-based model. JODI is corrected for missing countries and years (see below). IEA data is for all liquids minus processing gains and biofuels.

List of Oil Megaprojects as a Google Spreadsheet

I've started a spreadsheet copy of the Wikipedia oil megaprojects database. All the original data has been transferred (see below the fold) except for links that I may add in the coming days. I think a Google spreadsheet is much more appropriate than Wikipedia tables for manipulating data and exports in various formats. If anyone is interested, just send me an email for an invite.

Daniel Yergin massively reduced his energy estimates

by Jeffrey J. Brown 

Originally posted on the EnergyBulletin.

If one can’t rely on Daniel Yergin for soothing reassurances about the state of the global oil market, who you gonna call?

Daniel Yergin and his associates at Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) have consistently been predicting a 20% to 25% increase in global total liquids production (which consists of crude oil, condensate, natural gas liquids, refinery gains and other liquids such as low net energy biofuels). Technically, they attempt to hedge by stating that they are talking about productive “Capacity,” but it’s clear that they have been predicting a robust increase in global liquids production.

Impact of the Release of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve

In an unprecedented move, the IEA announced on June 23 the release of 60 millions barrels of petroleum products including 30 million barrels of crude oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) supposedly to compensate for the loss of the Libyan production. The basic idea is to "shock" the oil market and further lower prices by adding 2 million barrels per day over a period of 30 days. The last time such action was taken was after hurricane Katrina in 2005 and during the first Iraq conflict in 1990-91. Already, prices have dropped by about $3 since June 22, more below the fold.

Update on JODI

On June 18, the JODI database releasead their new numbers therefore I'm updating some of the charts I've published on TOD. The update is for the month of March which is the last month available from the EIA.

Saudi Arabia in One Chart

This chart is not for the faint of heart (100= 1981 value).