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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."'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.