Publication

This paper develops empirical models for average oil production costs. These models lend themselves as a tool for forecasting the floor of structural cost trends related to the shift into more cost intensive fields that are increasingly producing heavy and extra-heavy crudes and that are located offshore and in countries fraught with high levels of political and environmental risks. Given the limited availability of reliable, non-proprietary cost data, this model deliberately relies on high level factors for which data is publicly available for hundreds of fields from all oil producing states.