To Many’s Dismay, Permian Produces More Gas and Condensate Instead of Oil and Profits

As oil prices plummet, oil bankruptcies mount, and investors shun the shale industry, America’s top oil field — the Permian shale that straddles Texas and New Mexico — faces many new challenges that make profits appear more elusive than ever for the financially failing shale oil industry.

Many of those problems can be traced to two issues for the Permian Basin: The quality of its oil and the sheer volume of natural gas coming from its oil wells.

Fracking headlines

•Could California’s Shale Oil Boom Be Just a Mirage? •Could fracking boom peter out sooner than DOE expects? •More mineral owners seek to join gas lawsuits •Bakken field haste fuels massive natural gas waste •Shale gas fracking a low risk to public health -UK review •Underground Carbon Dioxide Injections Triggered Earthquakes in Texas in 2009-2011 •Colorado an energy battleground as towns ban fracking

Gas flaring at Bakken and Eagle Ford

Since the IEA presented its World Energy Outlook report of 2012 the world’s press has spread the news that the USA can become a larger oil producer than Saudi Arabia. They have also reported on increased production of shale gas. During recent years production of shale gas has increased so greatly that the price of natural gas has fallen to levels where it is no longer profitable to drill new wells. I have previously described how drilling rigs are leaving the shale gas fields. Today, the Oil&Gas Journal reported that, “Oil prices rise in mixed market but gas ‘falls off cliff’”.