The lower price of crude oil and natural gas reversed a two-year trend of record-high proven reserves in the United States in 2019 as operators revised their total proven reserve estimates, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Friday.
The annual report of the EIA showed that proven reserves of crude oil and rental condensate in 2019 remained basically the same as in 2018, with a very small increase of 0.1 percent. Proven reserves of natural gas, on the other hand, fell by 1.9 percent by the end of 2019, according to EIA data.
In that year, the price of crude oil was generally lower than the oil price in 2018, with the price of the American benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), crude oil, which averaged $ 57 per barrel, at $ 7 per barrel compared to 2018.
“The lower crude oil price in 2019 has led many operators to revise their total calculated reserve estimates downwards, although proven reserves of expansions and discoveries have increased slightly,” the EIA said.
By comparison, higher oil and natural gas prices in 2018 raised proven oil and gas reserves in the United States to new highs of all time. Oil and natural gas reserves were proven to beat the previous year’s record, when rising prices and the continued development of shale resources in 2017 pushed US reserves to record highs at the time. In 2018, US proven reserves of crude oil jumped by 12 percent.
In 2019, US proven reserves of oil, at 47.1 billion barrels, remained at the record level set in 2018, the EIA said in its report. Alaska producers added 259 million barrels of proven reserves of crude oil and rental condensate in 2019, the largest net increase in all states.
In natural gas reserves, proven reserves were recorded in 2019, the first annual decline in the United States since 2015, with Texas having the largest decline with declines in large shale gas areas such as the Eagle Ford, Barnett and Bossier.
Yet total gas reserves in the U.S. remain at their second-highest level ever, the EIA said.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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