Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
1.9 million. 13 trillion. 10 billion. These are the numbers that jumped off the page when I read PCI Fellow David Hughes’s latest “shale reality check ” report on the U.S. government’s forecasts of domestic oil and gas production.
Lifting the oil export ban would only perpetuate the problem of over-production. That is no solution to low oil prices, lost jobs or lower oil-related spending.
ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson is wrong about the resilience of U.S. tight oil production.
Two new reports on tight oil, or "difficult" oil extracted by fracking and horizontal drilling, and bitumen mining in North America strip away the marketing hype on extreme hydrocarbons and conclude that their futures may be volatile and shorter than advertised.
Post Carbon Institute has published a report calling into question the production statistics touted by promoters of hydraulic fracturing or fracking.
Since the autumn of 2011, a storyline of “oil revolution” and oil abundance–even “North American energy independence”—has taken the US media by storm.
Among the big energy stories of 2013, “peak oil” — the once-popular notion that worldwide oil production would soon reach a maximum level and begin an irreversible decline — was thoroughly discredited. The explosive development of shale oil and other unconventional fuels in the United States helped put it in its grave.
In this post I present an update to my previous posts over at The Oil Drum (The Red Queen series) on developments in tight oil production from the Bakken formation in North Dakota with some additional estimates, mainly presented in charts.
One of Canada’s top energy analysts has warned investors and geologists that "the shale revolution" will not meet conventional expectations as a so-called game-changer in energy production.
A mid-week update. While oil prices are little changed this week, there has been considerable news concerning the energy markets. Bad economic reports from Europe, the US, and China have helped keep pressure on the markets and raised fears of lower demand for oil in the months ahead. The worse-than-expected economic news, however, pushed the S and P to a new high Wednesday on the hope that Federal Reserve will continue quantitative easing. The increase in equities helped oil prices to recover from losses earlier in the week. At the close, NY oil was $94.30 a barrel while London had climbed to $103.68 thereby widening the WTI-London spread to $9.38 from Monday’s close of $7.65.
On March 4, David Frum, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush, published an article on CNN.com titled "Peak Oil doomsayers proved wrong" in which he not only claimed there was no danger of a shortage of oil, but also that "our oil problem is that we’re producing so much of the stuff that we are changing the planet’s climate." Mr. Frum is only the most recent contributor to a growing list of luminaries to declare that we need not worry about any future shortage of crude oil. The only problem with these reassuring proclamations is that the physical evidence does not support them, and does in point of fact, warn of a looming imbalance between supply and demand with troubling implications for the U.S. economy.
The Association for the Study of Peak Oil recently held its annual conference down in Austin, Texas. The venue for the meeting was right across the street from the University of Texas football stadium which is as close to the heart of Texas as you can get. This year the conference focused on two main themes: the rapid growth of tight oil production in the U.S. and where it is going; and the economics of oil (or, will prices continue to allow us to grow our economy?).
