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US Now Produces More Oil and Gas Than Russia and Saudi Arabia
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."'"
1) Import as much as possible
2) stockpile it
3) resell later for massive profit
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
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
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.
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.
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.
Not only has he managed to get every American health care, but he has also made us virtually energy independent.
Way to go, Obama!
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...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you don't descend from Political/Capitalist Royalty "opportunities created by these conditions" was not in reference to your family.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Isn't much of the foreign oil refined in the US 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.
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.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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
Nobody drinks water anymore. That's what's in toilets. It doesn't have electrolytes. It doesn't have what plants crave.
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.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
but produces more gas then it uses.
You leave congress out of it!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Somehow I don't see that happening, given that we currently export massive quantities of food to China.
And of course fracking is worse than nuclear. Nuclear energy doesn't pollute the environment as a matter of course, it only does it when accidents happen. That said, shale gas extraction doesn't have to be nearly as bad as you seem to think. The reason it pollutes the groundwater is pure irresponsibility on the part of the natural gas industry. If the EPA cracked down on fracking they would certainly find a way to do it safely.
If I were you I would worry about the government not working more than anything else. The government is the only body that can really prevent negligence in resource extraction.
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
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?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ok, I hope the NIH is good enough for you, because it's what determined my own concern.
here
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) And here's the larger picture.
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.
You usually don't celebrate that much that your rate of withdrawing funds from your bank account is at record high. Maybe quitting using this euphemism would help a tiny bit getting away from the damaging fossil fuel dependency ...
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.
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."
In related news, the USA has no plans whatsoever to do anything about the environment.
I guess that's what happens when you let J.R.Ewing, et. al. run the country.
No sig today...
Russia: $2.10 / gallon
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.
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???
how are we supposed to invade ourselves?
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.
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
The US hasn't built any big new refineries in a while - like since the seventies. We actually import refined products like gasoline to meet our needs. Source. Some big upgrades have been done, but we're not bringing lots of new capacity online.
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. 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.
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
(I think America needs to build more refineries but does not thanks to NIMBYs)
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.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So the oil that is millions of years old that we pump out of the ground, and then pump back into the ground to stockpile suddenly goes bad if we dont use it in several years?
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.
Im going to laugh my ass off when the drill to the mantle project keeps hitting pockets of gas and oil that we have been told for years was a limited fossil fuel. http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/01/tech/mantle-earth-drill-mission/index.html The horseshit about being harder to drill and pull from ungodly depths is just that-horseshit. We have had 5 wells drilled tapped and capped in ANWAR since the '70's. The real problem is how we harness the energy in a responsibile manner. Fracking is not the answer, I was being an ass. The technology exists for cleaner more efficent sorces of power yet our mindset hasn't really changed much since the days of the industral revolution. Wait! lemmie get off my milk basket...mah heads gonna 'splode. It's late for me 3rd shft IT. I had enough.
"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 favored candidates support.
Pols are oily characters.
" 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 supply.
Or do you think fracking is so evil it send methane into ground water back in tie form before fracking started?
I ccan'tr believe you reason is a report based on other studies and non peer reviewed information.
This type of thing pisses me off:
"Flammable levels of natural gas are common in water supplies, and explosions—even reports of flammable drinking water—have occurred near fracking sites"
And? AND? it also happen where fracking isn't. appalling..
There is a reason the focus is moving from groundwater, where nothing has been found, to waste spillover; which is actually something worth being concerned with. However it's an engineering issue and can be done right.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
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.
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 plans to get not much oil out, but for $140 it was worth it.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
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.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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?
"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.
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.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
'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."
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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.
as far as the big environmental concerns go: it doesn't matter where fossil fuels come from, it matters how much are being burned.
Correct. Additionally: It doesn't matter that the fuel is fossil, it matters that it is burned.
Burning things is bad, mkay?
Wrong. Burning non-fossil fuel is not a problem, it does not increase the atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
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 things that shouldn't have been leveraged. (hint: it's the stuff that led to the collapse and bank failures and bailouts... and seriously, who could ever think that commoditizing bad/risky debt was a good idea?!) Just about all the banks and nations were persuaded to go that route... some took more work than others but eventually through whatever means, they were convinced... all except Brazil. And wouldn't you know it but Brazil didn't suffer the way the rest of the world has been? Sure, there has been some effect there, but not quite like EU countries and the like. And why?? Doesn't have to be said. But sure, you could make the argument that "everyone got stupid at once" and the scenario I describe kinda shows that. But the way I see it, certain powers made it happen and caused/directed others to follow suit. I can't say that it was 'conspiracy' even though that word is no longer a word that means "go away, you're a nut-case" but it can be shown that those things happened even if the 'why' is speculative.