US Now Produces More Oil and Gas Than Russia and Saudi Arabia 416
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Claudia Assis writes that the US will end 2013 as the world's largest producer of petroleum and natural gas, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia with the Energy Information Administration estimating that combined US petroleum and gas production this year will hit 50 quadrillion British thermal units, or 25 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, outproducing Russia by 5 quadrillion Btu. Most of the new oil was coming from the western states. Oil production in Texas has more than doubled since 2010. In North Dakota, it has tripled, and Oklahoma, New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah have also shown steep rises in oil production over the same three years, according to EIA data. Tapping shale rock for oil and gas has fueled the US boom, while Russia has struggled to keep up its output. 'This is a remarkable turn of events,' says Adam Sieminski, head of the US Energy Information Administration. 'This is a new era of thinking about market conditions, and opportunities created by these conditions, that you wouldn't in a million years have dreamed about.' But even optimists in the US concede that the shale boom's longevity could hinge on commodity prices, government regulations and public support, the last of which could be problematic. A poll last month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that opposition to increased use of fracking rose to 49% from 38% in the previous six months. 'It is not a supply question anymore,' says Ken Hersh. 'It is about demand and the cost of production. Those are the two drivers."'"
Geopolitics (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what this means for geopolitics... will the US continue to support the Saudis etc?
OTOH I expect we'll just see Jevons Paradox in action, which would mean we still need the Saudis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Doesn't actually sound all that paradoxical, once you look at it.
The more useful a thing is, the more it will get used.
Until it runs out. Fortunately at the same time we're doing this renewable energy is taking off hugely, so by the time we finish rapidly eating the last few bits of the petroleum cake, we'll have a new cake to chow on.
The cake is still a lie, BTW.
Re:Geopolitics (Score:5, Informative)
We'd still support the Saudis because Europe and China still use Mideast oil. We might not have been independent of Middle East oil, but we've always used much less of it than other places do. The problem here isn't feeding US SUVs as much as it is keeping the world stable and out of an energy crisis. If the Saudis suddenly stopped selling oil to Europe, the US would be mostly okay, but it would trash our allies and seriously destabilize the world picture.
Re:Geopolitics (Score:4, Insightful)
If the Saudis suddenly stopped selling oil to ... it would trash our allies
When you say "allies", are you sure you don't mean "markets"? I don't think the USA has allies any more - just peoples and countries who depend on it for aid and subsidies and TV programmes.
Re:Geopolitics (Score:4, Informative)
Alliances arise out of necessity and mutual benefit, not from mutual like or some playground friendship mentality. As much as the governments of US allies may publicly denounce US actions for the sake of their own domestic image, they still collude with the US on geopolitics. For example, Merkel and parliamentarians may denounce PRISM and make public overtures of "overview" and "investigation", if only to keep their parties in favorable light with the public, but the BND's data-sharing will nonetheless continue because they need US data as much as the US needs theirs, if not more so.
Domestic refineries (Score:2, Informative)
Isn't much of the foreign oil refined in the US [businessweek.com] anyway? Strategically that still gives some control over the commodity.
Anyway the article linked to in the summary is short on details. It looks like the oil+natural gas mentioned in the summary really consists mostly of natural gas.
Re: (Score:2)
dependency on foreign oil
use wind and solar (and other renewables, like tidal and wave) to avoid this.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm worried it might bring even more long term dependency on foreign oil when US supplies are depleted.
Price goes up, people switch to other things. That dynamic hasn't changed.
Right now, if SHTF and all of the ME decided to stop exporting to the US, it would hike prices, but not completely stop the US economy.
Doesn't sound like much of a problem then because you're speaking of a temporary thing. Supply shocks would just encourage people to switch over to other systems even if the good is otherwise in plentiful supply.
If the US is empty, then it means a dependency on that area, far worse than now, similar to how if Russia turns off the natural gas to Germany, German citizens will freeze to death by the tens of thousands.
German citizens would not. They can switch over to electric heat.
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Price goes up, there's no realistic alternative, people buy less of other things. That's the reality. Economics only works if there's an alternative and there isn't one. Public transport sucks and bikes and electric cars are extremely impractical. What alternative sources of energy are drivers going to switch to? Or airlines? Or anyone else who depends on fossil fuels?
Re: (Score:2)
It would stop more than just the US economy. Why can't people understand how the largest economies in the world are intertwined and what effects one effects them all. The new natural gas production off the coast of Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey will give Europe another source of natural gas which nullifies any threat of shut down from Russia.
So why didn't prices go down then? (Score:5, Informative)
Why are we still paying $3.50/gal for gasoline?
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside. Each gas well requires an average of 400 tanker trucks to carry water and supplies to and from the site.
It takes 1-8 million gallons of water to complete each fracturing job.
The water brought in is mixed with sand and chemicals to create fracking fluid. Approximately 40,000 gallons of chemicals are used per fracturing.
Up to 600 chemicals are used in fracking fluid, including known carcinogens and toxins such as
The fracking fluid is then pressure injected into the ground through a drilled pipeline.
500,000 Active gas wells in the US X 8 million Gallons of water per fracking X 18 Times a well can be fracked
72 trillion gallons of water
and
360 billion gallons of chemicals
needed to run our current gas wells.
The mixture reaches the end of the well where the high pressure causes the nearby shale rock to crack, creating fissures where natural gas flows into the well.
During this process, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out from the system and contaminate nearby groundwater.
Methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than in normal wells.
Contaminated well water is used for drinking water for nearby cities and towns. There have been over 1,000 documented cases of water contamination next to areas of gas drilling as well as cases of sensory, respiratory, and neurological damage due to ingested contaminated water. Only 30-50% of the fractring fluid is recovered, the rest of the toxic fluid is left in the ground and is not biodegradable. The waste fluid is left in open air pits to evaporate, releasing harmful VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) into the atmosphere, creating contaminated air, acid rain, and ground level ozone. In the end, hydraulic fracking produces approximately 300,000 barrels of natural gas a day, but at the price of numerous environmental, safety, and health hazards.
Re:So why didn't prices go down then? (Score:5, Informative)
Why are we still paying $3.50/gal for gasoline?
Because of the deniers who will refuse more stringent pollution control and gasoline taxes. But sooner or later, it will be up to a more normal level.
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Why are we still paying $3.50/gal for gasoline?
Because cars don't yet run on natural gas?
Re: (Score:3)
Huh?
You have been able to buy CNG civics for a long time. Now other manufactorers are doing it too. Ford has trucks and vans powered by CNG. Conversion is not terribly expensive either.
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Okay, well perhaps I should change my comment to "Because very, very few cars run on natural gas?" The only sales figures I could find for the Civic CNG indicated that Honda had only sold about 1,600 of them in 2012. Promising, but not exactly commonplace.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, refueling is a bit hard to find, home compression is expensive and energy density is not that great by volume for CNG. Nor is MPG that good. Not only because of the realities of CNG but also because they are just changing the timing on a gasoline ice, not building something more suited to CNG. Kind of similar to the issue with ethanol and high blends of it. Sure gasoline engines can burn it, and it works, but since they are really tuned for something else it is not ideal.
Cars running natural gas (Score:2)
You have been able to buy CNG civics for a long time.
And how many people do you personally know that own one?
[/crickets]
That's what I thought.
Re: (Score:2)
So?
I don't know anyone who owns a Veyron either, do you doubt they exist?
Re:Cars running natural gas (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know anyone who owns a Veyron either, do you doubt they exist?
Nobody doubts passenger cars running CNG exist but they are about as rare as a Veyron - albeit for a very different reason. The simple reason there are hardly any CNG power passenger cars is that there is very limited refuelling infrastructure in place. Sure I can buy one in theory but since I can't refuel it most places it would be rather stupid to do so. Even electric vehicles have a more readily available infrastructure than CNG powered cars though they suffer from a similar problem. Most CNG powered cars are basically proof of concept vehicles rather than anything else
So the original post was correct if you aren't overly pedantic about things in that for all practical purposes there are no passenger cars that run on CNG. Strictly speaking there are some out there but hardly anyone actually has one because the circumstances required to make one practical apply to virtually no one.
Wait... How are we going to blame this on Obama? (Score:2, Troll)
LOL...
That sumbitch is destroying the country!
Re: (Score:2)
How are we going to blame this on Obama?
He's the damn President of The United States! In case you haven't heard, the buck stops there...
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I have no problem with that as long as it applies to ALL presidents, not just the ones you don't like...
Re: (Score:2)
How long have you been on the planet? I can't think of any president in recent history that wasn't given a hard time. At least, not while I've been alive and I know it went further back than that.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably longer than you, and I don't recall any President getting more blame for things that had nothing to do with his decisions than Obama.
I'm no Democrat either, they're all different shades of sellout idiots.
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Right... I'm sure that's a mighty convenient policy for you considering the previous guy.
Food (Score:2, Insightful)
So long term, we're contaminating the underground water table, which will eventually rise to the surface, and contaminate the food supply -- Can't you just wait until corn, even grown for livestock feed starts showing trace amount of these chemicals?
Or should we not worry since America doesn't make anything anymore, not even food, and we'll import all of our food from China?
People right now are all up in arms over Fukishima, but I see this fracking as much much worse for us long term -- so bad that it'll ma
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
You also get that these things are getting injected thousands of feet below the bottom of any water table, which is covered by impermeable rock...
And you also get that the point of fracking is to fracture that rock so that it becomes permeable???
Obama is Awesome (Score:2, Funny)
Not only has he managed to get every American health care, but he has also made us virtually energy independent.
Way to go, Obama!
Only Republicans can take credit for this boom (Score:2)
And, in the process, tell us how it would have been so much better if the Democrats would just get the fuck out of the way.
Re: (Score:3)
He also invented the internet!
The opportunities created (Score:3)
If you don't descend from Political/Capitalist Royalty "opportunities created by these conditions" was not in reference to your family.
Yet.... (Score:2)
Prices are still high and fluctuate like crazy...
They need to STOP speculation trading on it to stabilize the prices.
Bubble? (Score:5, Informative)
I have read several articles and reports by economists and geologists claiming this fracking boom is a bubble. The estimate of 100 years worth of gas is overstated. It seems 25 years worth of gas is more likely, less if gas exports are allowed. Then the bubble bursts. The shale oil bubble is worse, 80% of shale oil comes from two rapidly declining deposits, so unless replacements deposits are found that bubble bursts in ten years or so,. Also, we haven't even started talking about limiting factors like environmental issues and the increasing cost of maintaining production levels as the best deposits are used up. As usual everybody is so busy dancing to the buzz they don't stop to think.
Re:Bubble? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have read several articles and reports by economists and geologists claiming this fracking boom is a bubble. The estimate of 100 years worth of gas is overstated. It seems 25 years worth of gas is more likely, less if gas exports are allowed.
I don't really have an opinion on the issue as a whole, but it's worth pointing out that similar reports have been telling us for decades that the end was nigh, and yet we continue finding new deposits and/or new ways to exploit known deposits. Obviously that can't continue forever, and it seems pretty clear that there are other issues that have to be considered (e.g. climate change), but I'm pretty skeptical of anyone projecting near-term resource exhaustion.
It's always possible, of course, that this time the wolf really is here, but...
Besides that, I think anyone predicting a sudden collapse of supply is silly. That's not how the world works; you don't see all of the fields simultaneously ceasing production, instead many fields begin to decline at differing rates. The result -- when we near exhaustion -- will be that available supply gradually tapers off, which will cause prices to gradually rise in order to limit demand to available supply. Rising prices will eventually move us off of fossil fuels, if we haven't already done it for other reasons.
Re:Bubble? (Score:5, Informative)
I have read several articles and reports by economists and geologists claiming this fracking boom is a bubble. The estimate of 100 years worth of gas is overstated. It seems 25 years worth of gas is more likely, less if gas exports are allowed.
I don't really have an opinion on the issue as a whole, but it's worth pointing out that similar reports have been telling us for decades that the end was nigh, and yet we continue finding new deposits and/or new ways to exploit known deposits. Obviously that can't continue forever, and it seems pretty clear that there are other issues that have to be considered (e.g. climate change), but I'm pretty skeptical of anyone projecting near-term resource exhaustion.
It's always possible, of course, that this time the wolf really is here, but...
Besides that, I think anyone predicting a sudden collapse of supply is silly. That's not how the world works; you don't see all of the fields simultaneously ceasing production, instead many fields begin to decline at differing rates. The result -- when we near exhaustion -- will be that available supply gradually tapers off, which will cause prices to gradually rise in order to limit demand to available supply. Rising prices will eventually move us off of fossil fuels, if we haven't already done it for other reasons.
I was in the.skeptic camp in 2007/8 well before the mortgage crisis and I used to get got same kind of speeches you just gave. Nobody believed you could have a mortgage crisis on that scale, they didn't even think that there was anything wrong with putting people on bonuses handing out loans. You can have a fracking bubble without resource exhaustion just like you can have a real estate bubble without that being the end of real estate. Secondly, when it comes to shale oil and gas, resource exhaustion is a pretty rapid process. Regular oil wells last for multiple decades, shale deposits are exhausted in years and the drop in yields is very rapid so you frack your way through deposits very rapidly. You should read that last article linked to in the summary, it is a good place to start and it also mentions the 10 year shelf life of the shale oil boom (I got that figure elsewhere). I suppose we'll see what happens next, I just hope it isn't a rerun of the mortgage crisis.
Anti-energy president. (Score:3)
This is what happens when you put an anti-energy president and his horrible EPA regulations in charge.
Disaster, I tell you!
Funny how the additional domestic supply hasn't produced any drop in prices at the pump, eh? And how would a pipeline carrying that supply to ports for export lower prices?
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, really? oh.... wait.... (Score:5, Informative)
Oil production in Texas has more than doubled since 2010
Huh, that's interesting because I thought that it was more or less established that the lower 48 states hit peak oil a while ago. The price went up, but production didn't, because they couldn't, because it wasn't there.
Oh, wait, yeah, here we go:
It doubled from almost nothing. (linked like it's hot) [wikipedia.org] And here's the larger picture. [wikipedia.org]
Now, the main thrust of the article could be right on the money because it lumps natural gas in with oil and we've got a new way of squeezing gas out of the ground. WOO! Let's here it for technological innovation making the world a better place! But pointing out how Texas has doubled production from 300 to 600 million of barrels per year when it used to produce over 1200, and other than the last few years has been in decline since the 70's.... it's a little disingenuous.
But it's interesting that Texas has indeed ramped up oil production. There's probably a pretty serious story about why they're doing it NOW as opposed to during the massive scare that preceded the econopocalypse cica 2006.
nope, production is just some barrels each day (Score:2)
You usually don't celebrate that much that your rate of withdrawi
Oil company profits will rise ... (Score:2)
Nonsense (Score:2)
"...even optimists in the US concede that the shale boom's longevity could hinge on commodity prices, government regulations and public support..."
Whatever unicorns & rainbows legislation against current recovery methods will either be
- obsolesced by technology which will allow recovery without using those methods, or
- overturned by a petro-starving public when the prices get high enough.
Difficult-to-recover petro resources are never too far away; more accurately they're just banked for future generatio
And yet (Score:2)
I'm still paying $3.99/gallon for regular.
How much is gas in Russia and SA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Saudi Arabia: $0.91 / gallon
How many billions of dollars per year do we give the oil and natural gas industry in tax breaks every year? That savings is passed on to the consumer, right? It's not like oil companies are still raking in record profits.
Since the U.S. doesn't have a state run oil company, U.S. consumers get no special benefit from oil and natural gas production in the US being at an all time high. The oil companies sell it on the open market, it doesn't matter where it came out of the ground. Furthermore, production increases in the US will not outweigh demand increases across the rest of the world.
Net result: U.S. consumers still pay the same, the U.S. Government still gives oil companies tax breaks while they laugh their ass to the bank, a lot of people's groundwater is being contaminated, and in the end we will have nothing to show for it.
This is silly, (Score:2)
We sold out. (Score:2)
Why in the world would the US tap into its reserves when it could purchase oil abroad? Soon enough, oil is going to become scarce. Wouldn't it have been better for the US to save its reserves for that time. Seems to me like we sold out very cheaply to the oil interests at the expense of our long-term security.
Yet US oil producers pay no taxes, get subsidized (Score:5, Informative)
America may now be the world's biggest oil producer, but in contrast to other oil producing countries around the world, where multinational oil companies must hand over most of their profits (90% in Saudi Arabia), when they pump it out of the ground in the United States they pay zero taxes and are even subsidized with hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Why? Because of political bribery, now legal thanks to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which has created a corrupt Congress that affects both Democrats and Republicans alike.
Luckily there is still hope: it's called Wolf-PAC [wolf-pac.com]. This organization was launched in October 2011 for the purpose of passing a 28th Constitutional Amendment to end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections. Since Congress won't pass an Amendment like this on its own, the idea is to have the State Legislators propose it instead by way of an Article V Convention. At least 34 States need to cooperate for this to work, so it's not an easy thing to do, but already many have reacted with enthusiasm, notably Texas. If successful, Congress should be fixed within one or two election cycles.
Re: (Score:3)
"publicly finance all elections" is not a credible idea because it will never stop outside contributions which are protected as part of free speech. And PACs can always be started to launder more funds. In short, the pols will simply say, "Thank you very much, I'll just add to my PAC pile." And if you think shutting down PACs will help, it won't because they are protected by free speech as well and will just switch to running exclusively their own campaigns for or against "issues" which some of their favore
an independent confirmation (Score:2)
Now that we've solved our energy problem... (Score:2)
... we can turn our attention to how we make our water sources potable and how to decontaminate the soil around fracking sites. (Without lobbying the government to increase the maximum allowable levels of [insert name of nasty carcinogenic chemical here] so as to make the need for cleaning up fracking sites neatly go away.)
revenue stream (Score:2)
This is a step back in our evolution as a species...
We could have all the clean energy we would ever need, but humans (oligarchs) who rely upon **centuries-old** capital systems delivering resources...
But they don't like giving up their revenue stream...
Been through this before (Score:2)
When oil drilling first started in PA there was a huge boom and bust. There is nothing special about fracking technology, it is only a matter of time before other countries get it going and gas shale deposits are not limited to the US. The price of gas could get pushed down below the cost of the drilling and processing and become a bust. It might also become cheap enough to process natural gas as a substitute for oil in things like plastics depressing oil prices too.
can we get out of the Middle East now? (Score:3)
Can we please get out of the MIddle East and Europe now? I mean withdraw our troops and let those people deal with their own problems themselves?
Re:Importation (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Import as much as possible
2) stockpile it
3) resell later for massive profit
Re:Importation (Score:5, Insightful)
That strategy seems to work well for aluminium oxide, beryllium, chromium, cobalt, diamonds, ferrochromium, ferromanganese, iodine, iridium, mica, niobium, platinum group metals, talc, tantalum, thorium, tin, tungsten and zinc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_National_Stockpile_Center [wikipedia.org]
Re:Importation (Score:5, Funny)
THIS is what I believe is the US's plan to remain relevant in the coming economic collapse. As the rest of the world attempts to "route around" the damage caused by the US, the US's energy independence and abundance will make the US into an attractive exporter to control and keep the price of energy lower. At the end of the day, it's energy that runs the world. It is figuratively and literally a "power struggle."
So much for energy independence (Score:4, Informative)
The US consumes 7 billion barrels of oil per year (around 19 million barrels per day). Way more than the 12~13 million barrels produced in the US (according to the graph).
Reference: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=33&t=6
Re: (Score:3)
Look at the right of the graph, That's 12-15 million barrels *per day* or about 5 billion per year produced every year, i.e. quite a significant proportion.
Re: (Score:3)
THIS is what I believe is the US's plan to remain relevant in the coming economic collapse. As the rest of the world attempts to "route around" the damage caused by the US, the US's energy independence and abundance will make the US into an attractive exporter to control and keep the price of energy lower. At the end of the day, it's energy that runs the world. It is figuratively and literally a "power struggle."
Totally agree...no other countries in the world are responsible in ANY way for the coming economic collapse. Clearly the US is filled with much more intelligent people working daily to exploit the rest of the world. Pony up the oil bitches.
Your logic is retarded but unfortunately you are right about the part where we want to control as much oil as possible...just like every other country in the world.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, the thing is keeping the US dollar the international fiat currency. If the dollar fails, the "world banks" would unite and create a world currency. Then we'd have more of the same crap because they never actually learn their lessons.
As far as "no one else was responsible in any way" goes? Well I suppose it's about who you ask. Turns out, there was a systematic activity whereby the largest banks in the world and the governments which regulate them were convinced to allow additional leveraging of th
Re:Importation (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Importation (Score:4, Funny)
"Drill baby Drill would have only marginal downward presure on prices. So it follows that "Hoard baby Hoard" would also have only marginal upward presure on oil prices.
Appalling. I've always been concerned about the state of children laboring in sweatshop, but now you're offsetting the economy by exploiting infants?! Shame on you.
Re:Importation (Score:5, Insightful)
You may be forgetting that (we are told that) oil price is set in the global marketplace. "American" oil does not stay in America. This "fact" is always used to explain price increases. Increased "American" oil production will only effect oil prices in the context of global supply. "Drill baby Drill would have only marginal downward presure on prices. So it follows that "Hoard baby Hoard" would also have only marginal upward presure on oil prices. All this talk about increased American production being a boon to Americal consumers is mostly nonsense. Same applies to the argument that the Keystone pipeline would be a boon to consumers here in America. These are con jobs designed to make a very small handful of already very wealthty Americans even more wealthty. Most Americans will/would see very small price changes at the pump.
For oil this is true. The cost to ship oil is quite low, so oil produced in one country doesn't really help lower prices. The price is reasonably the same around the world.
For natural gas, this doesn't apply. Transporting large amounts of natural gas is expensive. It is energy intensive to compress and cool the gas into a liquid. Some gas is lost during the ocean journey, either as blowoff (LNG ships typically do not have liquification equipment on board, so as the gas heats up, it boils off), fuel for the ship, or both. Right now the US has huge natural gas production, but moving it outside of the US is expensive. So natural gas in the US costs ~25% what it costs in Europe, and ~35% of what it costs in Russia. The natural gas boom IS keeping gas prices very low, and in places where electricity and heating is gas, this is saving US consumers a lot of money.
Re: (Score:2)
1) Import as much as possible 2) stockpile it 3) resell later for massive profit
Amazing that this was even up-voted. Slashdot users suck at logistics.
Re: (Score:3)
1) Import as much as possible
Amazing that this was even up-voted. Slashdot users suck at logistics.
They also suck at geology. The US is at the leading edge of the fracking revolution, but Russia, China, Europe, Argentina, Africa, etc. also have enormous amounts of shale gas and oil. Far more than all the conventional reserves combined. All they need is the right technology and economic incentives to start extracting. The presumption that there is a coming supply shortage is ridiculous.
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Good luck with that. Unlike diamonds natural gas isn't exactly rare.
Re: (Score:3)
Diamond aren't actually rare. There are places in Africa where you can literally pick them up out of river beds.
Raw diamonds, not the finished cut stuff.
Re: (Score:3)
Clearly, that is not what we're doing, because the most efficient way to "stockpile" would be to not pump it all out of the ground in the first place. That's the whole idea behind the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which the "drill baby, drill!" folks are trying to shortsightedly destroy.
Re:Importation (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily - depends on the reason for the stockpile. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is designed to alleviate short term fluctuations such as in an embargo or war. It's oil you can get out by flipping a switch. Leaving it in the ground would be a longer term stockpile. However, it's not like you can just punch a hole in the ground and set up a tap and collect the dollars. Wells cost a lot of money so sinking them and leaving them to produce at some unknown time in the future is not an economically viable proposition unless you plan on nationalizing the oil companies.
The economics of oil production are complex and odd. Public companies pretty much have to drill constantly as their stock prices depend mostly on proven reserves rather than actual production. And you don't know what you have until you've got it.
Further, there are tragedy of the the commons issues - if you don't drill out the reservoir you've already spent time and money developing, that clown on your right just might beat you to it.
So 'efficiency' is a poor, nebulous metric. Given the private ownership of oil companies in this country a long term holding strategy isn't going to happen. It's not rational and it's not in the societies best long term interest, but it's what we've got.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Importation (Score:5, Informative)
2 Factors.
America uses more oil then it produces but produces more gas then it uses.
America has a lot of refiners. IIRC Nigeria exports oil to the US where it is refined into gasoline and shipped back. Also remember that plastic is comes from oil and gas - and we produce and consume a lot of plastic.
Re:Importation (Score:5, Funny)
but produces more gas then it uses.
You leave congress out of it!
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Importation (Score:4, Informative)
While it is true we have not built any new refiners since the 1970s we are still a net exporter or gasoline and other petroleum products.
From your own source:
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_neti_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_m.htm [eia.gov]
(I think America needs to build more refineries but does not thanks to NIMBYs)
Re:Importation (Score:5, Informative)
You're more Illinois Nazi than Grammar Nazi. A proper Grammar Nazi would not have used a comma to separate independent clauses without a conjunction. Perosnally, I would have preferred a semi-colon. All the cool Nazis are using them these days.
Re:Importation (Score:4, Insightful)
In related news, the USA has no plans whatsoever to do anything about the environment [wikipedia.org].
I guess that's what happens when you let J.R.Ewing, et. al. run the country [opensecrets.org].
Re:Environmentalists... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. While the long-term implications of increased production are troubling, and there should be local concern regarding fracking(I've changed my mind, real scientific evidence suggests groundwater contamination isn't uncommon), as far as the big environmental concerns go: it doesn't matter where fossil fuels come from, it matters how much are being burned.
Re: (Score:2)
... real scientific evidence suggests groundwater contamination isn't uncommon ...
Please provide a link to this evidence. Fracking has been industry standard practice for 50 years or so - it is NOT a new invention - and there are no recorded instances that I am aware of where contamination has been proven.
There was a case where contamination was found, but tests that would have shown fracking to have been the cause (the gas that is released has a 'signature' and so can be traced to a specific well) was not done for some reason (possibly because the well drilled to run the tests could
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't the EPA withdraw a study from peer review? Something about how the methodology was fatally flawed.
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Ok, I hope the NIH is good enough for you, because it's what determined my own concern.
here [nih.gov]
from your link (Score:3)
" Based on a non-peer-reviewed survey of the five states that systematically report incidents at wells "
ah, so not really all that great.
Also, methane is found naturally in groundwater, especially in areas that are also going to be used for horizontal fracking.
I can go to places that have no fracking withing 200 miles that have methane in the water.
Methane in the water s not evidence of 'contamination' from fracking.
Aras of the US that have the right geology for shale will ALSO have methane in the water sup
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That's assuming the contamination is from the fracking fluids, and not methane, which is by far the more common problem.
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Also remember that the shale gas/oil is very deep (~3km), while ground water that can be consumed by humans is shallow (~300m). Any water reservoir that can be contaminated by oil/gas moving through the induced fractures will have a very high salt content. Very high as in "at least ten times more saline than sea water", or "brine". Any water that could conceivably be contaminated by fracking is unsafe for consumption anyway.
The bigger problem in fracking is not introduction of contaminants from the fracturing of the rock. As you point out, that happens a depths very different from most aquifers. The problem comes from bad cementing of the bores and leakage from the well itself. It's a technical issue, it can be identified and dealt with. It need not happen. It just requires people to behave in a professional and competent manner at all times.
Oopsie.
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Yes, but if market forces(sans true-cost of fossil fuel burning) are pushing for more production in the U.S., if the U.S. didn't, someone else would.
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A religious fanatic will always find *some* sign that armageddon is coming, no matter what. This just means that the whole "We've hit peak oil, now it's all downhill from here!! Doooommmm!!!" scenario is temporarily removed from their vast arsenal of doomsday scenarios. But they'll have a dozen more boogeymen to replace it with by tomorrow. You can't stop Chicken Little from being Chicken Little.
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Religious fanatics running the country are already waging crusades under the guise of "bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East" and defending God's chosen people. They are so reckless because they are trying to turn the book of Revelation into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Religion is lunacy!
-- Ethanol-fueled
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It is ok, we have a backup planet.
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It's disingenuous to pretend this represents only a penny difference over decades, but groundwater contamination is apparently a problem.
Re:I'd rather all the drinking water was contamina (Score:5, Funny)
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"Idiocracy" was a documentary
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Canyonero!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4QgWRycd7I [youtube.com]
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'I live in the suburbs'. = "Oh my god, I'd never allow myself to be seen by the public in something as sensible as a mini-van."
Re:Well, there we have it (Score:5, Interesting)
I just paid $3.17 last night, just 5% over your $3 target so I'd say we're getting close. What I don't get is why LSC is still at $109 a barrel, with US production up this much and global demand still slightly below 2007 levels we should be under $80, probably around $75. The only thing I can think of is inflation and speculation, and no other metric shows a 25% inflationary factor for the dollar so it has to be down to speculation and manipulation by the financial players, can we please limit their interaction with the commodities market please so the rest of the broader market can reap some of the benefits of this cheaper fuel.
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no other metric shows a 25% inflationary factor for the dollar
The BLS methodology used from the 1970's to the 1990's does [shadowstats.com].
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Fracking is still a rather expensive way to get oil out of the ground. Back in the good old days when you could stick a straw in the ground and oil would come out you could sell it for real cheap and still make boatloads of money. When you can sell oil for over $100 per barrel, you can do some pretty crazy shit to get it out and still come out ahead. When it touched $140 I sat in a couple of planning meeting where geologists were talking about (what I thought were) absolutely insane drilling and mining plan
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I'm not worried about fueling my car, I already drive a 1.8L compact sedan, I'm worried about the drag on economic growth expensive fuel continues to cause.
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Did you miss the entire point of the article? We AREN'T running out of easily accessible crude, in fact world supplies are UP due to increased US output, in fact supply is going up faster than demand which would normally drive prices DOWN but that isn't happening which is why I said there are only two logical conclusions, the dollar is inflating relative to crude (unlikely based on other indicators) or there is market manipulation going on (likely based on various studies showing that up to 30% of the cost
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You're not allowed to talk about buggering in Russia these days though...