There is an early release of the 2013 EIA Annual Energy Outlook overview.
US crude oil production is already at 6.82 million barrels per day and has been pretty steadily increasing for the last three years. This was an increase of 300,000 barrels per day from two months ago when the last North Dakota and Texas state oil production were reported. It seems like 2013 and later years are being underestimated by the EIA.
Continental Resources has new well results which indicate that the oil in place in the Bakken is 903 billion barrels and not 577 billion barrels. They previously had estimated a 4% recovery rate for about 24 billion barrels. A 4% recovery rate on the new oil in place estimate would be about 36 billion barrels. This is over double the high end recovery scenario by North Dakota’s oil department. This would mean that North Dakota should have a plateau of 2 million barrels per day. There would also be an incentive of $900 billion for companies to find a way to increase the recovery rate by each additional percentage. (ie from 4% to 5% and 36 billion barrels to 45 billion barrels).
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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