From Oilprice
By Rystad Energy – Jan 24, 2019, 11:00 AM CST
In a major shift, the United States is set to produce more oil and liquids than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined by 2025.
In Rystad Energy’s base case oil price scenario, US liquids production is forecast to surpass 24 million barrels per day over the next six years, thereby outpacing the combined output from Russia and Saudi Arabia.
“The United States, having regained its position as the world’s top liquids producer in 2014, is poised to accelerate into a league of its own over the next six years and eclipse the collective output of its two closest rivals by 2025,” said Rystad Energy partner Artem Abramov.
Historically, the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia have consistently switched places at the top of the global list of liquid producers – measuring crude oil, lease condensate and plant natural gas liquids – but lately market-driven US oil activity and production has built significant momentum. The US has not seen its liquids market share exceed 50% among the “Big Three” producing nations since 1970.
“US growth potential could be slowed if oil prices slide below our base case for extended periods but, as long as average prices stay above $50, positive US production tendencies will persist,” Abramov added. Related: Saudi Arabia: We’ll Pump The World’s Very Last Barrel Of Oil
Rystad Energy, the independent energy research and consulting firm headquartered in Norway with offices across the globe, assumes an average WTI Cushing oil price of $58 per barrel in 2019 to 2025.
That forecast looks like IPCC temperature forecast. Up, up and away.
They should charge dearly for forecasts and return the money if accurate. That would put an end to the silliness.
US production is climbing like a homesick angel.
That’s because reality has consistently accelerated up, up and away from the forecasts since the beginning of the shale “revolution.”
You might say it looks like… a hockey stick.
… ok, I’ll leave.
It’s a real hockey stick.
Looks more like a boomerang. And in the words of Bill Parcells, that would be a good thing, not a bad thing! MAGA.
Anyone remember Sarah Palin being mocked for “Drill, baby, drill!”? The cognosenti were of the opinion there was no way the US could ever drill out way out of energy shortages, and the only solution was conservation and renewables.
That was summer 2008 and the US shale fracking revolution had yet to intrude into the Lib-Greens’ virtual reality bubble. They were too enthralled with tingles up their legs over their latest demi-god, The Anointed One, who promised to “slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet” to notice how wrong they were.
Don’t forget that The Anointed One, while doing all that the regime could do to end the hydro carbon industry in the US, later took credit for all of the fracking and increase in the economy.
They said there was not enough oil under the US to be worth looking for, maybe a few days worth of global usage at best, and the lag between discovery and production was so long it was a waste of time.
They were as sure of these things as they were that Hillary would win, that GDP could never go above 2% ever again… and everything else they have been dead wrong about.
The left is wrong about everything.
And always has been.
Fantastic! Haven’t seen an analysis showing how much wealth this is generating for the USA. Wealth we use to invest in other parts of our economy.
Consider the horrible truth of so many attempting to prevent the people from receiving this great bounty. The USA was built on converting natural resources into wealth. Either through extraction or land use we made ourselves rich. Rich enough to allow a good portion of our citizens to be idiots and still eat. Thank You fracking cowboys. We need a big memorial to these guys on Pennsylvania Ave.
That oil price forecast speaks to the reality of US oil executives being paid for growth, not shareholder profit. Shareholders can change this. The President wants cheap oil. Shareholders have been wiped out doing it.
Oil should be cheap right now. We may be off our record highs for oil in storage but we’re still swimming in black gold. There is a disconnect between supply and demand.
I’m paying exactly the same for gasoline today as I did in 1972, adjusted for inflation. Gas is cheap.
Lucky you don’t live in euronastan.
1.40€ per litre. 6.30€ per UK gallon.
Or “Shitsville” (Australia). ~AU$1.50 for Premium 98.
It’s even cheaper than you think as the price of gasoline includes a large amount of tax, remove the taxes and a gallon of gas is much cheaper.
“Gas is cheap”
Which is great for the U.S. economy. Every $0.80 drop in gasoline prices adds about a one percent increase to the U.S. GDP, which is a lot of money.
I think that calculation might out of date.
When the US was large net importer of Middle East Oil, the negative oil price/US-GDP was certainly the case. As the US became more dependent on mid-east oil in the 1960’s to 1970’s, higher oil prices put US money directly into oil sheiks pockets in the Persian Gulf to build bigger palaces and buy bigger private jets.
Today, higher oil prices means frackers in New Mexico-Texas-Oklahoma, Colorado, North Dakota can make more money to invest in more drilling. And fracking and better horizontal drilling on plays in the Gulf of Mexico will continue to make those more expensive plays more profitable for US operators there.
The Energy Revolution has changed the Rules of the Game. And the Greens are still clinging to Old Rules and remain in denial of situation with the US energy independence to promote their expensive wind and solar hustle for supporters like Tom Steyer and the Rockefeller family.
RE: …with the US energy independence to promote their expensive wind and solar hustle for supporters like Tom Steyer and the Rockefeller family.
Those ground tremors near Cleveland are not from fracking. That’s old John D. Rockefeller spinning in his grave at the actions of his descendants. I hope the old boy has an RPM overspeed limiter in his casket.
Heck with the overspeed limiter. Hook a generator to the old guy.
“I think that calculation might out of date.”
You are probably right, considering the argument you made, but it was the only calculation I had. 🙂
We will get a new calculation eventually.
Gas in my area has dropped from over $3/gal to under $2/gal. Gas is cheap.
Even more so when you consider how much of the price of gas is taxes.
Report 30 May 2013:
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/archive/2013/2013_05_30/pdf/highlights.pdf
Graph:
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/archive/2013/2013_05_30/pdf/figure1.pdf
Report 5 Apr 2017:
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/archive/2017/2017_04_05/pdf/highlights.pdf
Graph:
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/archive/2017/2017_04_05/pdf/figure1.pdf
Report 1 Feb 19:
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/pdf/highlights.pdf
Graph:
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/pdf/figure1.pdf
Some interesting tidbits, compare the third paragraph of the report from 13 Oct 16 report to the 19 Oct 16 report.
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/archive/2016/2016_10_13/pdf/highlights.pdf
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/archive/2016/2016_10_19/pdf/highlights.pdf
There was another interesting change in verbiage, third paragraph, between the 13 Jun 2018 report and the 20 June 2018 report.
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/archive/2018/2018_06_13/pdf/highlights.pdf
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/archive/2018/2018_06_20/pdf/highlights.pdf
Compare to cost of bottled water, which no one even needs, but many buy anyway.
One cup of Starbucks cost more than a gallon of gas, even though a $4 pound of beans will make hundreds of cups.
Price of stuff is crazy.
Gas is the best deal there is.
Imagine if the markup was like coffee or water?
Executives shouldn’t be compensated when they grow the company??????
Do you own stock in oil companies? I do. They pay good dividends, raise them frequently, and the forecasted production growth helps keep stock valuations high. This shareholder has absolutely no problem with their strategy, whatever it is.
Where do you get the idea us shareholders have been wiped out?
Not bad for a country that was predicted to run out of oil before now by an earlier generation of under qualified pundits, advocates, and Presidents.
Now we just have IEA in Paris to deal with and those who want to force the end of energy dependence after recognizing it would not decline on its own.
…end of energy independence…
“Predictions are difficult to make…especially about the future.” Yogi Berra?
Is that wise decision, the way the fusion is going the world might need oil for centuries to come, and even more so if global cooling takes place in meantime. Why not conserve home reserves for future when market price goes up as it surely would.
Conserve US reserves now, and prices will rise making all the other major oil-producing countries very happy while hurting US companies and consumers.
It’s a good point and perhaps a wise strategy for chess but we have a serious balance of payments problem to address. That and our history. We generally don’t plan like this. We exploit for the here and now and figure out the future as it comes. To some this may sound irresponsible. Here’s why it isn’t. Who would do this planning? What opportunities would you lose and never recover while waiting? Lower energy prices lift all boats including and especially the mass of smaller ones. Those are also the boats that go down under the weight of waiting.
Drill it. Frack it. a outrance. By then we will have come up with something better.
The UK took similar attitude towards the North Sea reserves, thinking Culham fusion was just around corner with boundless cheap electricity. Now the reserves have nearly run out, fusion is pie in the sky, and we have to import russian gas and French electricity.
Bad comparison as the geographical size and geology of the US compared to the UK is quite different.
build nuclear, coal, and gas for electricity and use the oil for plastics, fertilizer, and transport.
or
buy wood pellets from the US, build non-base power wind and solar, etc… aka what we are fighting to prevent. The oil and gas money wealth is what we are fighting to achieve.
And what was your alternative for the UK, spend all those years importing gas and electricity , or do without? when they had the North Sea reserves available? seriously?
Ah, the sound of crickets 🙂
All the extra wealth will eventually end up with the Chinese manufacturers and consequently the Chinese arms industry, then the USA is going to ask themselves where did we go wrong, why aren’t we number one by mile any longer?
And where would our basic wealth go if we continue paying other countries for their oil? Much of the *extra* wealth will go to the US government in the form of taxes,some used to fund military R&D, e.g. DARPA, to keep us ahead of what other countries are doing militarily.
Find any example in history where conserving ANYTHING benefitted future generations, or would have.
“China has stood up” Not the fake stand up proclaimed by Mayo but a real rise based on Capitalism. We are happy for the Chinese people. No reason for this to lead to conflict. Most Americans I know never aspired to lead the world. They aspire to prosperity and liberty in their lives.
If we import Jeremy Corbyn or let our domestic Leftist loons take the helm you will be proved correct.
The UK are dependent on other countries because they refuse to frack, refuse to burn their own coal, and refuse to build nukes. And you are advocating they should have refused to use the oil, too?
With or without North Sea oil, they could be energy independent. The UK has plenty of its own energy resources; they simply chose not to exploit them, to their own detriment. The country that one day controls the territory that is now the UK will be very appreciative, assuming those assets still have value.
It was not necessary to close down or convert existing coal burning power stations to oil. UK coal reserves in energy terms were order of magnitude larger than all of the N. Sea oil. There are still about 10 or so oil burning stations in England, don’t know about the rest of the UK, but many are now being converted to (mostly imported) gas burning.
Burning domestic reserves of oil for electricity generation it just doesn’t sound to be a good husbandry of resources, unless you are Saudi Arabia.
I love the U.K. So rare to see a nation resist the creep of the bureaucrats (called the EU). I hope it works out for you guys.
The U.K. should be building Nuclear Power Plants and recycling the waste into more fuel (just like the U.S. SHOULD be doing). I am not sure about the economics at this time, but Germany in WWII proved you could supply yourself with a lot of fuel by turning coal gas into petroleum. One thing you really need is heat to do this (and pressure). Guess what nuclear power plants produce A LOT of?
So you could completely replace most fossil fuel and all green technologies with reliable nuclear plants, and then build at least one experimental coal to petrol plant so that you are advancing the science and technology within your borders. If there ever is an embargo against your great nation, you have enough coal to produce a lot of petroleum to outlive the embargo.
It is better to restict oil use only for transportation rather than for producing electricity, granted, but the root problem is that that the UK refuses to either frack domestic natural gas ot use domestic coal supplies. Their stupidity compounds and confounds. That led to both the misuse of oil reserves and the inportation of foreign energy.
The UK doesn’t have any oil-fired power stations. We do have diesel generators for emergency supply.
“It’s a good point and perhaps a wise strategy for chess but we have a serious balance of payments problem to address.”
Yes, we do, but it’s getting a little bit better thanks in part to increased oil production in the US.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-tradefigures/us-trade-deficit-narrows-in-november-as-imports-decline-idUSKCN1PV1LF
Feb 6, 2019
U.S. trade deficit narrows in November as imports decline
Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. trade deficit fell for the first time in six months in November as cheaper oil and higher domestic petroleum production helped to curb the country’s import bill, leading economists to boost their economic growth estimates for the fourth quarter.”
end excerpt
First off, using the oil now generates wealth now. Wealth now is always more valuable than wealth in a century or more. (Assuming we still need to use oil a century or more from now.)
The best solution is always to create wealth now, and use that wealth to create even more wealth.
And yet, wealth seems to be in fewer hands, while debt seems to be everywhere.
Wealth is in few hands now because the elite in this country laid in bed with China made great money selling us treasure(knowledge) and manufacturing ability to china. They then supported a carbon tax another scheme to bleed the middle class of more money. It about time that the middle class figure out politician have been bought and paid for by china and Bill Clinton put that project front and center.
Seems is the operative word there.
When you examine the actual data, the change between now and previous decades isn’t all that much.
Two points. In a growing economy, wealth disparity always grows, as those with ability get rewarded.
Secondly, if you want real wealth disparity, check out any country with socialism or communism.
A six year running extrapolation of a current trend.
In a famously volatile commodity market.
dime/dozen.
I agree that one should be very skeptical of the Rystad Energy forecast. It might be OK but, even disregarding the impact of volatile commodity price and demand, the forecast must be supported by expertly detailed and valid knowledge of each reservoir (i.e. each rock unit from which it is assumed the gas will be produced). Calculations of areas underlain by a named geologic unit are insufficient because a named subsurface geologic entity can be and usually is highly variable as to the properties necessary for commercial production. In addition, surface conditions (zoning, politics, lakes, mountains, mineral ownership, climate, …) relevant to the industrial activity will also vary.
This is obvious but is so often disregarded. There is time and place for effusive optimism and also a time for difficult, conservative detailed work. I will, however, admit, that in the petroleum business there is only one certainty – if you do not drill, you will produce nothing. Everything else is uncertain.
Sounds great. Cheap energy will drive greater economic growth which will improve people’s lives and increase the general happiness.
It’s all so ridiculously simple. Freedom is what drives innovation, exploration, economic growth and prosperity. It’s the chance to make a profit and get rich that makes people assume risks, invest capital, invent and innovate, and work hard.
Government just drives stagnation, economic decline and poverty. No one is going to take a risk or work hard just to have the government come along to take everything they earn away from them.
You would think the self-proclaimed geniuses like the Greens and the socialists could see the obvious. “That government is best which governs least.” Let people be free and everything else will work itself out.
Mostly due to CNG and LNG exports no doubt. Russia and Saudi Arabia do not have the need to liquify natural gas in order to export it.
As many readers here remember for decades we were told we were running out of not just oil but fossil fuels in general but especially oil and gas. The idea of such pontificating was to slow the US economy which progressives fully understood, runs on inexpensive oil and gas. Cut off cheap energy and destroy capitalism wherever it might be found. Doing it to the USA sets an example to the rest of the world, half of which were laughing then.
Besides so called catastrophic sea level rise predictions what else is a 1.5 degree increase in the Earth’s average temperature suppose to do? What would be more catastrophic the collapse of the world’s economic system or a change in weather? We can’t get to 100% renewable in the World by 2050 without extreme catastrophe. I have decided that the AGW crowd totally lacks common sense and any capability of creative/ analytical thinking. Sadly, they believe they are the smartest folks on the planet.
Gosh, and our economy’s booming – despite ‘blue horseshoe’s’ attempts to tank the stock market.
Don’t forget that the Greens i.e. Communests , want to destroy the economy. Only then so they think, can they tell the average person that their way of governing is far better than what we presently have.
Instead of thinking that the Greens are just another political party, even if a bit nutty, we should regard them as just as dangerous long term as the present bunch of Islamic terrorests. and treat them accordingly .
MJE
Let me get this straight: 7 million extra barrels a day, about 16% increase in ‘big three’ production, but oil prices stay within 6-7% of current prices?
Are we assuming a lot of big non-US fields ending their lifetimes or being sanctioned out of existence the next six years?
Otherwise all other things being equal you might expect prices to come quite close to the $50 a barrel tipping point….
Or there are continued big increases in demand from countries such as China and India.
Don’t forget that OPEC (as well as the Saudi’s and the Russians) does a lot of adjustment to their output to manipulate the price of oil
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/12/business/oil-prices-opec-adipec/index.html
At Trump’s SOTU address last night the President said,
“We have unleashed a revolution in American Energy — the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world.
And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy.”
Much to their disgust obviously, Politifact had to give the first statement a “mostly true.” And the second statement (net exporter),was true at times in 2018, and will be completely true for the whole year by 2020 (next year).
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/feb/05/fact-checking-state-union-2019/
Over at the TDS-triggered WaPo, the fact checkers said this,
“The notion that “a revolution” in energy began under the Trump administration is wrong. The United States has led the world in natural gas production since 2009. Crude oil production has been increasing rapidly since 2010, reaching record levels in August 2018, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
In September 2018, the United States passed both Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the largest global crude oil producer. It is expected to hold that position, according to predictions from the International Energy Agency.”
What the deranged WaPo journalists fail to understand is Trump did not claim credit for the energy revolution. He said “we”, he did not say “I” or “my administration.” But in their continuously triggered state, the WaPo writers can’t understand that simple reality, instead they went about inventing in their minds a “notion” he said something he didn’t say.
That is another example of cognitive dissonance in action, i.e. wanting to hear something that was not spoken or even remotely implied by your opponenet. Trump’s statement is objectively true, yet their raging derangement syndrome makes the WaPo writers hear something he didn’t say.
Expect this kind of raging TDS to now get even worse in the Leftist green-renewable controlled media, as Trump said nothing last night in his SOTU about Climate.
Kinda hard to ignore the (supposed) world’s looming existential threat of climate change, unless it really isn’t one. And the Left has no direct come back for that other than ramp up the propaganda machine another notch to level 12.
“And the second statement (net exporter),was true at times in 2018, and will be completely true for the whole year by 2020 (next year).”
It is already true. Politifact assumes that to be a net exporter you have to be a net exporter of each of coal, natural gas and oil. That has only happened for odd weeks yet, but if you add up the amount of energy the US is already a net exporter since the energy content of the exported coal and oil is larger than the amount of energy in the imported oil.
“Trump said nothing last night in his SOTU about Climate.”
The absolutely worse thing he could have done in that regard is acknowledge/indulge their framing.
Indeed, he spent on it exactly the amount of time it deserved: None
I would hate to see the economy if we had not had the fracking boom.
Ask the Germans. That is their reality. electric bills at 3x. BMW and Mercedes moving production to the US. Cutting down ancient forests to get to the brown coal while virtue signaling the EnergieWende propaganda and wind turbines now marring their landscapes. Net food importer as farmers stop growing food crops. Needing a gas pipeline from Putin to keep the heat on in just a few more years, which will make them Russia’s vassal state again.
Germany’s 20 year outlook is bleak. Very bleak. As in Venezuela Bleak.
Germany has all through the Cold War, and now, always had a reliable partner – Russia. LNG pipelines are cheaper than US shipped stuff. It is nuts to think the Nordstream can be blocked by sanctions to force US LNG on the market.
Shutting down nuclear is the greatest modern travesty – state of the art fission plants replaced with giant Asparagus contraptions. The delayed infamous Morgenthau Plan implimented by Berlin. Since Bismarck was fired German de-industrialization is the stated goal of that very same global elite Trump has locked horns with, that very same elit foisting CO2 and climate on the masses. Look at the face of Davos and quail.
Just don’t tell the socialists.
(*) Investors Business Daily 12/7/2018 https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/energy-independence-trump/
You know we can quibble around the edges of prosperity until the cows come home. If we did that we would be sustainability freaks which we are not. We there be economic downturns in the future. Yup. Will we one day run out of fossil fuels to exploit. Yup. So how does expensive energy stop any of that happening. It doesn’t and you can’t prove that it does. Reminds me of a Russia story which I will shorten:
A poor man finds a genie. He ask for a great fortune. The genie tells him that whatever he gets his neighbor will get double. The man asks the genie to put one of his eyes out.
Sin number 2. Envy. Both personal and national.
In the future, there’s also an even chance that demand for fossil fuels will crater.
While a knowledging that this is an expert’s forecast, and that I am mostly self taught in energy and energy storage, i tend tomthink the forecast is grosslynoptimistic, applying a ruler to recent past US production rather than looking at the basics.
US production of conventional oil (API>10, reservoir porosity >5%, reservoir permeability>10 millidarcies) peaked ~1972.
So the oil production increases since are all unconventional fracked shale. While it is true that TRR estimates for the major shale basins continue to rise (more data, better extraction percents —1.5% going to 3%, a doubling in just half a decade (thanks to plug and perf plus more proppant) but unlikely to ever double again— they are still quite finite, with steep well decline curves. For example in the Bakken, even with tighter spacing about 1/3 of the productive footprint was already drilled in 2014. Most serious studies put peak US shale oil production somewhere between 2021 and 2023.
That strongly suggests Rystad’s 2025 forecast is geophysically very unlikely.
I am not sure what “serious studies” you refer to.
There is a lot more oil and gas in the ground here in the U.S. than 5 years worth of growth – but growth assumes that price makes it worthwhile. So let’s put a price on oil so that we remove one variable – let’s say $80 a barrel which is the target of Russia and Saudi Arabia (and no I don’t think they will achieve this reliably bu I need some value to work with).
At $80 a barrel, the U.S. has over an estimated 200 billion barrels of oil that it can recover. We currently burn through about 7 to 8 billion barrels a year. That means we have at least 25 years of oil left in the ground for our own use. OK, so we export say half of that… We still have at least 12 years of oil in the ground. This does not include other unproven reserves like the heavy oil sands or green shale deposits, which contains as much as 10 x more oil, but which we current so not have the technology to economically extract. (This also assumes no more oil fields (or shale fields) are discovered, but they will be)
There is a LOT of untapped oil in other countries. Eventually many of those will begin using new technology (like Fracking and Horizontal Drilling) to extract those resources. This is more likely than anything else to limit the growth of U.S. oil – the effect of more oil being produced in many places bringing the price down. Low price, less oil will be produced here. So rather than a “peak oil” caused by resource exhaustion, it is more likely that a U.S. peak oil will be caused by price.
We are likely to have plenty of oil right up to the fall in its demand as technology moves on.
Rud, there are a lot of hydrocarbon rich shales out there. Some we’ll fugure out in due time, some will never be big producers, but this story has a long time to run. Look at the Utica—- first overlooked, then considered the next big deal, then a disappointment, now looking pretty good. I worked the sands in contact with the Mowry for years….. loads of oil in it, hardly even looked at so far. The Permian has a number of different black shales, some currently being developed, many not yet. The Paradox has some shales just as black and stinky, same age. Years of unconvensional work left to do…..
Utica was included in all my and others analyses. For the record, Utica outcrops west and downslopes east. Parts in Ohio are in the oil window. But the major parts that underlay the Marcellus are all only gas window by definition. This post is about oil liquids, not gas.
Suggestion: bring referenced counter facts, not opinions, to counter my always fact based comments.
Well, that just show you don’t understand the oil biz Rud. Through the whole peak oil panic some of us understood that high price would bring supply on line. It was an “opinion”. We could not say just where, but we had professional opinions based upon science that it would be found and developed. All oil is found because of someone’s “opinion”.
Well Rud, all oil is found by acting on someone’s “opinion”. That is how the oil biz works —- you make a guess based on the data you have and take your chances. The facts you want are not out there yet. It is my opinion, based on advanced degrees in geology and geophysics and 40 years of industry experience is the there will be a lot more shales brought on line.
Sorry if repeat post—out in field poking a phone
24 million barrels per day? That’s counting the chickens before the eggs are laid.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/114710/art-berman-exposing-false-promise-shale-oil
Good podcast regarding shale oil.
I find it interesting that the people who keep saying American oil shale is “played out” are the same people 10 years ago talking about “Peak Oil.”
Point of order, “Price point economics” for oil has always made hash of those who bet on mineral exhaustion. That is, market incentives in terms of oil prices have always called forth technological innovations that add to known oil reserves at whatever the going prices is. Then further capital investments in that technology, and techniques using it, drop the price over time.
The key development in this is that “Political risk” is part of that price point. And the American oil shale fracking revolution is moving oil and gas production into geographic areas of minimal long term geo-political risk premiums per barrel of oil produced.
Why put all that oil field capital equipment in Russia, the Arab world or Latin America when you know the locals will expropriate it via nationalization?
All this was blindingly obvious in 2012, when the ex-chief of British Petroleum predicted that US oil shale fracking would make the USA energy import free. Although he predicted 2030 and not 2019-2020 for that to happen. (Such is the power of free-market capitalism.)
See:
13 July 2012 Last updated at 06:55 ET
Shale will free US from oil imports, says ex-BP boss
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18828714
“The big growth in oil extracted from shale rock means the US will not need to import any crude within two decades, the former boss of BP has said.
Lord Browne told a conference in Oxford the US would be “completely independent of imported oil, probably by 2030”.
He also said the amount of shale gas in the US was “effectively infinite”.”
Another oil article to show you all how wrong the ‘peak oil’ nutters were in the early 20-teens and how wrong they are about US oil shale right now.
It’s all about oil price point economics and the Capital Expenditures (CAP-EX), stupid.
>North American oil output could top 40-year-old peak
>By TOM FOWLER, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
>Wednesday, September 28, 2011
>
> North America appears headed for an oil renaissance, with crude production expected to hit an all-time high by 2016, given the current pace of drilling in the U.S. and Canada, according to a study released by an energy research firm this week.
>
> U.S. oil production in areas including West Texas’ Permian Basin, South Texas’ Eagle Ford shale, and North Dakota’s Bakken shale will record a rise of a little over 2 million barrels per day from 2010 to 2016, according to data compiled by Bentek Energy, a Colorado firm that tracks energy infrastructure and production projects.
>
> Canadian crude production is expected to grow by 971,000 barrels per day during the same period, with much of the oil headed for the U.S.
>
> Combined, the U.S. and Canadian oil output will top 11.5 million barrels per day, which is even more than their combined peak in 1972.
>
> Goldman Sachs has estimated the U.S. could move from being the No. 3 oil producer behind Saudi Arabia and Russia to the No. 1 spot by 2017.
>
> It’s a reversal of the steady downward production trend that started after 1971, when U.S. oil production peaked around 9.5 million barrels per day.
>
> And the pace of production now has caught quite a few people by surprise, says Joseph Pratt, a historian at the University of Houston who has written extensively about the oil and gas industry.
>
> “We have this momentum out there to set about doing what we said we wanted to do back in the 1970s: reduce the flow of imports from volatile regions,” Pratt said. “It was like the Holy Grail back then. And suddenly it seems possible.”
>
> The surge is fueled by the same drilling and production techniques that opened up natural gas production in recent years – the combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing – as well as the success of deep-water Gulf of Mexico projects and the ramp-up of Canadian oil sands projects.
>
> The natural gas glut has kept its price low, prompting producers to focus more effort on oil and natural gas liquids, which fetch better prices.
>
> Earlier this year, the number of land and offshore oil rigs working in the U.S. exceeded the number of natural gas rigs for the first time in 18 years, according to data compiled by IHS-CERA.
>
> And Texas oil and gas industry employment returned to its pre-recession highs in June, according to the Texas Petroleum Index, topping the last boom that peaked in October 2008, thanks largely to oil drilling.
>
> The oil boom has plenty of economic upside potential. IHS-CERA predicts oil production could directly and indirectly generate another 1.3 million U.S. jobs over the next decade and raise an additional $97 billion in federal taxes and royalty payments.
>
> But plenty of people are concerned about the other costs that might come with more oil production.
>
> The proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a major project to bring Canadian oil sands to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, has become a rallying point for environmentalists, with hundreds arrested during a sit-in in front of the White House several weeks ago.
>
> And the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with new rules aimed at tighter controls on emissions from oil and gas drilling, production and transportation.
>
> The industry contends the proposed rules put a costly burden on a job-creating industry at a time when the country needs jobs.
>
> But Daniel Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank, said the industry is far from being hobbled financially. He noted that the five oil majors – Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips – have reported $67 billion in 2011 profits and are sitting on $60 billion in cash. Yet they have cut more jobs than they’ve created in recent years and spent billions buying back their own stock, Weiss said.
>
> Pratt predicted that tensions among the resurgent oil industry, community groups and environmental groups – heightened by last year’s Deepwater Horizon accident and oil spill – will continue.
>
> The conflict was manifest in public hearings Monday in Port Arthur, where federal officials took comments on the Keystone XL pipeline project, Pratt said.
>
> “The first 25 speakers were union workers and locals saying they needed the jobs the pipeline would bring. Then the bus from Houston pulled up, and the environmental groups spoke about how it’s the filthiest oil in the world,” Pratt said.
>
> “All of them had passion about their point of view, but there are questions of fairness and justice and economics that we just don’t know how to talk about.”
Then why to we need to beat up on Venezuela? How many countries with oil have we beat up on?