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(peakoilbarrel.com) Rystad Energy , an independent oil and gas consulting services and business intelligence data firm in Oslo, Norway, has online, a wealth of information concerning upstream oil production projects and costs. Some of it is a bit dated but some of their charts date from late 2015.

The two below Rystad charts were published by CNN Money on November 23, 2015. Costs, Overall This is overall or average cost, not marginal cost. It cost Canada $41 to produce a barrel of oil but only cost Russia $17.20. I guess that is why Canada is cutting back but Russia is not. Costs, Breakdown Here is the breakdown between capital expenditures and operational expenditures. Why would the United Kingdom’s operational expenditures be two and one half times those of Norway? After all, they are both drilling basically the same oil field.

So why is not the price of oil having a more dramatic effect on production? Well it is, it just takes a while. Here are some plans from about a year and a half ago, when the price of oil was much higher.

Rystad published the two below charts in their US Shale Newsletter in January 2015 but the data dates from the 4th quarter of 2014, just as the price of oil had started to drop. Cost per Play At that time Bakken (ND) had a break even price of $53 while Eagle Ford oil had a break even price of $42 and Eagle ford condensate a break even price of $50.

The below chart, from the same newsletter, assumes $90 a barrel oil . Costs, Startup Shale oil, at the time, had an average break even price of $65 a barrel, which would have given them a 45% internal rate of return and a payback time of only 2 years. It is amazing how much things have changed in just a little over a year.

But by October 2015 things had changed dramatically.

Global offshore oil production in aging fields will fall by 10 percent next year as producers abandon field upgrades at the fastest rate in 30 years, in the first clear sign of output cuts outside the U.S. shale industry, exclusive data shows.