A longer version of my question….
The EIA kindly publishes detailed production data from the US. The monthly data is generally considered the most reliable. Here I am just looking at the Permian subset.
It is presented as total production – with the increment month-on-month being the net of a (big) decline in all previous production (“Legacy”) and a usually bigger increase in new production (although this recent example is of a small net decrease)
Rinse and repeat, month after month and the overall production increases.
However, there seem to be two unknowns:
- The actual decline of the Legacy and,
- The real “new” production