U.S. Tight Oil Production Tendency Analysis

Abstract

Tight oil production has gradually grown into the main driving force of crude oil production growth in the U.S. as well as an important contributor to the global crude oil supply. Agencies tend to forecast U.S. tight oil production tendency based on different resource and technology conditions. However, tight oil production is not only affected by the technical factors but also economical ones such as the well costs and the oil prices. To solve this problem, the exploration and development statuses of important tight oil reservoirs in the U.S. are investigated from both the technical and economic aspects. With the investigation results, the tight oil production tendencies of six plays including Bakken, Eagle Ford, Bone Spring, Wolfcamp and Niobrara are been achieved according to the oil & gas production composition method. And the forecasting result shows that the tight oil production in the U.S. will reach the peak level at about 8.3 million barrels per day in the year 2025. Permian basin is the core area of tight oil production in the United States, especially the Wolfcamp-Midland sub-play. The Wolfcamp sub-play is far ahead of other tight oil production areas in terms of reserve size, sweet spot size and production level, and will be the biggest driver of tight oil production in the United States in the future.