EIA AEO2017 Wolfcamp Reserves

The Energy Information Agency of the United States estimates the mighty Wolfcamp

bench(s) of the Permian Basin will produce 8.89G BO of oil between 2017 and the year 2050. To date there has been a little over 3,000 Wolfcamp wells drilled since 2011 in the Permian and cumulative production has been around 365,000,000 barrels, about 122,000 BO per well.

No mention from the EIA of what oil price it will take to "warrant" that future development or where the money is going to come from. David Hughes suggests it will require 56,400 horizontal wells and $340 billion in todays dollars, at a very low $6M each, to get that done. Where the EIA thinks all those wells are going to go is beyond me; Hughes also suggests there will have to be roughly 640,000 more wells drilled in the Permian, and over $4 trillion dollars spent, to meet the EIA's projections for other benches.

I fear the Permian Basin is going be one giant limestone pad from Big Lake to Carlsbad. They'll have to take some cows to the taxidermy man and display them in the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in memory of the bygone days, when 'cattle was king' in West Texas, and there was still a little water for them to drink.

For the record it will require, hypothetically (its the EIA, after all), over 33 years to recover 8.89G BO of oil from the Wolfcamp and at current consumption rates in the Untied States that would cover us for about...15 months.