Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
If you’re someone who’s curious about the geopolitical implications of carbon fuel and the ecological havoc it wreaks, you’ve probably come across some of Richard Heinberg‘s work. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with this senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.
What if peak oil is a process rather than a moment, a process with a series of twists and turns filled with sometimes ambiguous and counterintuitive signals?
The move by OPEC last week to raise oil production to compensate for outages among the group’s members shows that U.S. shale oil (properly called “tight oil”) is still in its cross hairs–and that the economics of tight oil remain abysmal.
The US Energy Information Administration, or EIA, regularly updates its estimates for how much oil and gas might be recovered in the future, and at what rate. With the application of new technology from year to year, those estimates generally keep going up. But it’s important to remember that they are just estimates — and the devil is always in the details.
Oil production can be confusing because there are various “pieces” that may or may not be included. In this analysis, I look at oil production of the United States broadly (including crude oil, natural gas plant liquids, and biofuels), because this is the way oil consumption is defined.
The latest EIA drilling productivity report (11th April 2016) shows US shale oil production continuing to decline in Bakken, Eagle Ford and Niobrara while the Permian has flattened out.
Whatever happened to “peak oil” – the assertion that the rate at which oil is extracted from the Earth is nearing a maximum or peak level?
America’s energy future is largely determined by the assumptions and expectations we have today.
U.S. oil production has begun to drop in response to low oil prices, but not as dramatically as many had anticipated.
Last week, members of the media breathlessly reported that the Utica Shale could hold more recoverable gas than the Marcellus, the largest shale gas play in the country.
To get some understanding of what will drive future developments on Light Tight Oil (LTO) extraction in Bakken, it is helpful to look at individual companies.
It is not because of decreased rig count. It is because cash flow at current oil prices is too low to complete most wells being drilled. The implications are profound. Production will decline by several hundred thousand of barrels per day before the effect of reduced rig count is fully seen.
