Top U.S. Shale Oil Fields Decline Rate Reaches New Record…. Half Million Barrels Per Day
While the U.S. reached a new record of 11 million barrels of oil production per day last week, the top five shale oil fields also suffered the highest monthly decline rate ever. This is bad news for the U.S. shale industry as it must produce more and more oil each month, to keep oil production from falling.
According to the newest EIA Drilling Productivity Report, the top five U.S. Shale Oil fields monthly oil decline rate is set to surpass a half million barrels per day in August. Thus, the companies will have to produce at last 500,000 barrels of new oil next month just to keep production flat.
Here are the individual shale oil field charts from the EIA’s July Drilling Productivity Report:
The figures that are shown above the UP arrow denote the forecasted new production added next month while the figures above the DOWN arrow provide the monthly legacy decline rate. For example, the chart on the bottom right-hand side is for the Permian Region. The EIA forecasts that the Permian will add 296,000 barrels per day (bpd) of new shale oil production in August, while the existing wells in the field will decline by 223,000 bpd.
If we add up these top five shale oil fields monthly decline rate for August will be 503,000 bpd. Thus, the shale oil companies must produce at least 503,000 bpd of new oil supply next month just to keep production from falling. And, we must remember, this decline rate will continue to increase as shale oil production rises.
We can see this in the following chart below. Again, according to the EIA’s figures, the top five U.S. shale oil fields monthly legacy decline rate increased from 398,000 bpd in January to 503,000 bpd for August:
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