Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bakken, crude oil, energy, IEA, IEA forecast, OECD, oil price predictions, oil supply, OPEC, peak oil, refining capacity, shale oil, tight oil
IEA… Not a good track record with the predictions. Doesn’t stop ‘em from throwing out new crazy numbers every year.
While geopolitical risks abound, market fundamentals suggest a more comfortable global oil supply/demand balance over the next five years. The MTOMR forecasts North American supply to grow by 3.9 million barrels per day (mb/d) from 2012 to 2018, or nearly two-thirds of total forecast non-OPEC supply growth of 6 mb/d. World liquid production capacity is expected to grow by 8.4 mb/d – significantly faster than demand – which is projected to expand by 6.9 mb/d. Global refining capacity will post even steeper growth, surging by 9.5 mb/d, led by China and the Middle East.
via IEA – May:- Supply shock from North American oil rippling through global markets.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bakken, enegy, frack, fracking, IEA, oil journalism, oil production, oil shale, oil supply, Peak Demand, peak oil, shale oil, tight oil, Tom Gjelten
As NPR’s Tom Gjelten reports:
“Petroleum engineers have always known about the untapped underground oil in the United States, but it was unreachable, trapped in tight shale rock. Then the engineers figured out how to crack the rock. Hydraulic fracturing — fracking — got that ‘tight oil’ finally flowing in places like North Dakota.”
via Huge Boost In U.S. Oil Output Set To Transform Global Market : The Two-Way : NPR.
Wrong, Tom. The tight oil has been ‘reachable’ for several decades, it was just such an expensive process that it made no sense to do it when oil was cheap — a money-losing proposition. Now, all the cheap oil is gone, and out comes the ‘unconventional’ oil.
Gjelten also said that the decline in oil consumption in the US was due to efficiency (check the VMT chart Tom). There was no mention of depletion of existing fields, or the striking decline rate of fracked shale wells. And he reported that cheaper oil is just over the horizon.
Would it hurt Mr. Gjelten to do just a tiny bit of research on the topic of his reports so he doesn’t sound like a complete idiot?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bakken, fracking, health care costs, shale gas, shale oil, tight gas, tight oil, Watford City
A less obvious form of corporate welfare.
The furious pace of oil exploration that has made North Dakota one of the healthiest economies in the country has had the opposite effect on the region’s health care providers. Swamped by uninsured laborers flocking to dangerous jobs, medical facilities in the area are sinking under skyrocketing debt, a flood of gruesome injuries and bloated business costs from the inflated economy.
via Boom in North Dakota Weighs Heavily on Health Care – NYTimes.com.
This post is an interesting companion to the one below.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bakken, CH4, fracking, horizontal drilling, Natural gas, natural gas flaring, North Dakota, oil production, shale oil, taxes, tight gas, tight oil
Rampant waste and environmental degradation have been part of the Bakken boom. The state doesn’t care about that, but it wants its taxes.
Helms estimates that about 30% of the gas produced in the state is flared, since development of takeaway infrastructure has not matched the pace of drilling.
Producers are currently allowed to flare gas for a year without paying royalties. The new bill would extend that tax-exempt period for two more years if an operator can collect at least 75% of the produced gas.
via N. Dakota tax bills pique industry interest – Upstreamonline.com.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: COGC, Colorado Oil and Gas Association, energy production, Frackenlooper, fracking, fracking ban, Hickenlooper, Longmont, Natural gas, shale oil, tight gas, tight oil
This report in the NYT doesn’t mention that our governor Frackenlooper has all but joined the suit in an attempt to overrule the voters of Longmont. If he plays his Weasel Cards right he’ll be a cabinet member some day.
The lawsuit, filed on Monday by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, seeks to overturn the ban on the contentious practice that passed by a wide margin last month in the northern Colorado city of Longmont. The measure, the first of its kind in the state, still allows oil and gas drilling within city limits, but it prohibits hydraulic fracturing, which has lifted energy production across the country but has raised concerns about air and water contamination.
via Suit Seeks to Overturn a City Drilling Ban in Longmont, Colorado – NYTimes.com.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Asjylyn Loder, Bakken, cornucopianism, crude oil, fracking, hydraulic fracturing, lies about fracking, Marcellus, North Dakota, oil extraction, peak oil, PR, propaganda, shale oil, techno-worship, technology, tight gas, tight oil, United States oil production
America’s latest oil rush was spurred by new technology that has made drilling faster, cheaper and better at unleashing oil from rock formations,…
That is false. Fracking (the oil guys always called it ‘fracing’) is old technology. Many decades old. But it’s an expensive way to get oil, relatively speaking. So it hasn’t been prudent to frack/frac for shale oil until the overall situation reached a certain point where the price of a barrel of crude was likely to remain above the cost of extraction. In other words, the fracking boom in the U.S. does not signal the death of Peak Oil. It is in fact part and parcel of a new era wherein cheap oil is a memory, a much more expensive era in energy. Perhaps that is why the misinformation campaign has been in overdrive.
via Asjylyn Loder, “American Oil Growing Most Since First Well Signals Independence,” Bloomberg..
Spreading disinformation through the media is even older technology.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ambient air testing, Bakken, Benzene, butane, chloride, chloroform, chromium, drill pad, fracking fluid, fracking wastewater, Marcellus, methane, North Dakota, propane, Schilke, shale gas, shale oil, strontium, sulfates, toluene, well testing
After drilling began just over the property line of Jacki Schilke’s ranch in the northwestern corner of North Dakota, in the heart of the state’s booming Bakken Shale, cattle began limping, with swollen legs and infections. Cows quit producing milk for their calves, they lost from 60 to 80 pounds in a week and their tails mysteriously dropped off. Eventually, five animals died, according to Schilke.
Ambient air testing by a certified environmental consultant detected elevated levels of benzene, methane, chloroform, butane, propane, toluene and xylene – and well testing revealed high levels of sulfates, chromium, chloride and strontium. Schilke said she moved her herd upwind and upstream from the nearest drill pad.
via Livestock falling ill in fracking regions | Center for Investigative Reporting.
From February:
The Pennsylvania farmers I spoke with have lost cows, calves, a horse, a couple dozen chickens. Many of the animals succumb in the same way: seizure-like symptoms, gasping for breath and a quick wasting away. A Rottweiler and a Dalmatian also fell ill and died.
Gives new meaning to the term ‘tail risk.’
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bakken, crude oil, demand destruction, energy, fracking, IEA, KSA, mbd, oil consumption, oil production, Our Finite World, refinery gain, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabian oil production, shale gas, shale oil, tight gas, tight oil, Tvberg, Tverberg, unconventional oil, US oil production, WEO, World Energy Outlook
The happy talk on future production is crazier than ever in the latest IEA World Energy Outlook, but there are also some stunningly pessimistic predictions buried inside. Wild!
For instance: The US will become number one oil producuh again and rediscover our lost oil-producing prowess with about 11 million barrels/day (Yay!) — which must mean Saudi Arabia won’t approach IEA’s previous prediction for that country of roughly 15 mbd output (Ooof). And the predicted exporter status of the US (Yay!) relies as much on a huge drop in consumption as it does on increases in production (Ooof). So it’s a bit of a sad day in IEA land, where consumption always went up, up, up.
From Tverberg:
The International Energy Agency (IEA) provides unrealistically high oil forecasts in its new 2012 World Energy Outlook (WEO). It claims, among other things, that the United States will become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020, and will become a net oil exporter by 2030.
Figure 1. Author’s interpretation of IEA Forecast of Future US Oil Production under “New Policies” Scenario, based on information provided in IEA’s 2012 World Energy Outlook.
Figure 1 shows that this increase comes solely from the expected rise in tight oil production and natural gas liquids. The idea that we will become an exporter in later years occurs despite falling production, because “demand” will drop so much.
Note that IEA and other maniacs add NGLs, biodiesel and even ‘refinery gain’ to the US oil production number, in a crude attempt to fool y’all.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bakken, Bakken Shale, crude oil, energy, horizontal drilling, James Hamilton, Jeffrey Brown, marginal costs of production, natural gas liquids, Niobrara, oil price, oil shale, peak oil, shale oil, shale plays, tight gas, tight oil, tight oil formations, unconventional oil, westtexas
Throwing a little cold water on some recent, loudly reported unscientific predictions. When you read Hamilton, always be sure to read the comments by Jeffrey Brown for an important Big Picture view.
In addition to the uncertainties noted above about extrapolating historical production rates, the rate at which production declines from a given well over time is another big unknown. Another key point to recognize is the added cost of extracting oil from tight formations. West Texas Intermediate is currently around $85/barrel. With the huge discount for Canadian and north-central U.S. producers, that means that producers of North Dakota sweet are only offered $61 a barrel. Tight oil is not going to be the reason that we return to an era of cheap oil, for the simple reason that if oil again fell below $50/barrel, it wouldn’t be profitable to produce with these methods. Nor is tight oil likely to get the U.S. back to the levels of field production that we saw in 1970. But tight oil will likely provide a source of significant new production over the next decade as long as the price does not fall too much.
via Econbrowser: Shale oil and tight oil.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chesapeake, Chesapeake Energy, China, energy, energy independence, energy security, Natural gas, shale gas, shale oil, Sinopec Fu Chengyu, tight gas
All part of America’s new ‘energy security.’
Fu Chengyu, chairman of Sinopec Corp, was in Oklahoma last week to explore the possibility of a bid for a shale gas project, which is owned by Chesapeake Energy, the second largest shale gas producer in the US, Reuters reported.
via China's Sinopec eyes shale gas assets in US | China Economic Review.
