NZ oil production and consumption

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Permalink Reply by Tim Jones on June 10, 2008 at 23:39

Dear Paul,

I don't have this graph, but I can tell you that the statement about NZ consumption vs production of oil is incorrect - with a sizeable caveat. The place to look for figures of this sort is the Energy & Resources section of the Ministry of Economic Development web site at http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/StandardSummary____33.aspx

From there, you can get a number of documents, including weekly petrol & diesel price updates, and also such publications as the New Zealand Energy Quarterly. The Dec 2007 edition is available at http://www.med.govt.nz/upload/55768/NZEQ_dec07.pdf (1 MB PDF), and on p 1.2, a table shows that, in December 2007, we imported 50.1 petajoules (PJ) and produced 35.7PJ of oil. *But* of that 35.7PJ, we exported 34.7PJ, meaning that only 1PJ of NZ's production was used in this country!

To be fair, the production figure has increased greatly with the Tui oil field coming online (in Dec 2006, production was only 10.3PJ). As I understand it, we export nearly all the oil we produce because it is premium grade and we can get more for it overseas. I understand (though I'm not sure) that we could potentially refine it in New Zealand - but I don't know how long it would take to tool up NZ refineries to process it if that became necessary. I'm currently chasing up this question with the MED.

Regards
Tim Jones
Convenor, Sustainable Energy Forum

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Permalink Reply by Chris Olson on June 15, 2008 at 9:30

I remember a figure of around 20% oil production of consumption but have never been sure so I found a few figures and charted them in the attached spreadsheet. It seems NZ currently produces around 13% of its consumed oil in 2005 and oil production has been as high as 37% in 1989. These figures are just straight barrel per year volumes and do not include any import or export data. There are also no reserve data included or consideration of the Tui field

The data sources are

NZ Oil consumption
http://www.swivel.com/data_columns/show/2032299

NZ Oil Production http://www.crownminerals.govt.nz/cms/petroleum/facts-and-figures/ne...

This chart includes Oil, Condensate & Naphtha but not LPG.

I also included a consumption figure comparison (spreadsheet) to the figures which were found on http://indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?country=nz&product=oil&gr...
just to be a bit clearer.

Chris

Attachments:

• NZ Country Oil Consumption.xls, 36 KB

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Permalink Reply by Paul Kennett on June 15, 2008 at 21:20

Nice work Chris.

Doh! It took me a while to register the "Million Barrels Per Annum" - I'm so used to seeing "Million Barrels Per Day" in reference to global production.

Could you expand on your comment: "no consideration of the Tui field"?

I see the consuption data is from the 2005 BP Statistical Review. Anyone keen to update Chris's data with the 2007 BP Stats?

Also - I found this: http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/

Cheers, Paul

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Rundle-Keswick on June 15, 2008 at 22:46

Hi Paul,

I came across this page I'm not sure if it is what you are looking for .

http://www.energyfiles.com/asiapac/newzealand.html

I got to it from

http://www.lastoilshock.com/map.html

Andrew

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Permalink Reply by Paul Kennett on June 16, 2008 at 12:24

That's a nice summary of the NZ oil production story.

Thanks, Paul

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Permalink Reply by Paul Kennett on June 16, 2008 at 12:31

Hi again Chris

I've just tried updating your chart with the latest figures - and the left hand units is confusing me again. Sorry if these questions are a bit dumb....

The BP Stat 2007 statistical review consumption data uses "Thousand Barrels a Day" as it's units. But the Crown Minerals data provides two columns; "Total (mmbbls)" and "Average bb/s/d" - what do they mean? You've used the Average number - why not the Total annual number?

Cheers, Paul

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Permalink Reply by Paul Kennett on June 16, 2008 at 13:13

Not sure if I'm on the right track or not... I've redone your chart here:



http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pPNNCty5ChTFeRo5m31XXdA&...

After looking at the Crown Minerals site I worked out "mmbbls" means million barrels. So I've taken that number multiplied by 1000 to get "thousand barrels per year" then divided by 365 to get "thousand barrels per day".

Sound reasonable?

Cheers, Paul

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Permalink Reply by Paul Kennett on June 16, 2008 at 13:21

Ah... now I see it's exactly the same number.

*Sigh*

Paul

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Permalink Reply by Chris Olson on June 16, 2008 at 18:00

Hi Paul,

I'm very sorry for the confusion I've caused in forgetting to change the Y axis label. It should have been Barrels per Day. Not million barrels per annum.

The mmbbls units are million barrels and I think the author made a mistake with the bb/s/d unit. It should be bbls/d as that column is Barrels per day. For example, in 1970 NZ total production was 6.808 million barrels for the year. Divide this by 365 days and you get 18652 barrels per day on average.

Hope this helps and clears up the confusing chart label.

Chris

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Permalink Reply by Chris Olson on June 16, 2008 at 18:05

Hi Paul,

Just to clarify, you are on the right track with your calculation but you need to divide the mmbbls value to get to thousand barrels per year then divide by 365 to get to Thousands barrels per day. Again sorry for the confusion not correcting sooner. I've posted an explanation of the units on this page to say that the Y axis units are actually Barrels per day.

Also, 'no consideration of the Tui field' indicated that the data stopped in 2006 while the Tui field came into production in 2007. It has been producing 45,000 barrels per day which is a significant increase from the total NZ production of 19000 bbls/d in 2006.

Chris

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Permalink Reply by Paul Kennett on June 16, 2008 at 22:20

Yeah - after each post I slowly figured out more and more.

My chart includes data from the latest BP Stat Review (up to 2007) and data fro m Crown Minerals on production for 2006. Then I've eyeballed the chart on energyfiles.com to get 2007 production at about 65 thousand barrels per day.

Then I've added 2 percent decline curves from 2007 onwards - which fits nicely on the consumption data (which peaked in 2005), but the production decline looks a bit silly.

Cheers, Paul

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Permalink Reply by Chris Olson on June 18, 2008 at 8:30

Paul,

I think thats a good representation of where NZ currently stands on Production and consumption currently. There will be more production with the Kupe gas starting production. It is expected to add another 4500 bbls per day of oil. So basically, NZ is still short of supplying our current oil consumption from within NZ by a very large percentage.

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