Will The Third Great Energy Revolution End The Oil & Gas Industry?

The history of crude oil and natural gas is a history of technological innovation. Until recently the innovation supported crude oil and natural gas. Now, it challenges it, causing structural changes in the crude oil and natural gas markets. Originally, crude oil was only used for lighting. This changed following the invention of the internal […]

‘Transformation Is Happening’: Saudi Aramco’s Chief on Future of Oil

As Saudi Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, prepares for a widely-awaited initial public offering next year, its chief executive, Amin H. Nasser, is at the center of the planning. Mr. Nasser has run Aramco, which produces more oil than any other company in the world, since 2015, and also oversees a wide range of […]

US oil floated on cheap money

How much has the US oil industry been inflated, crushed and generally distorted by the Federal Reserve’s monetary force-feeding over the past nine years? According to my probing along the stages of production and trading, the answer is “a lot”. Yes, there have been dramatic developments in hydrocarbon production technology, but those looked even better […]

World Crude Oil Supplies per July 2017

In this post I present developments in world crude oil (including condensates) supplies since January 2007 and per July 2017. In this post the world crude oil (inclusive condensates) supplies is split into three entities, North America [Canada, Mexico and the US], OPEC(13) and other Non OPEC [World – {North America + OPEC(13)}] with a […]

From Russia With Love: A Super-Chilled Prize for China

CNPC will be first recipient of Arctic project’s fuel Chinese investment helped defray impact of U.S. sanctions The ‘Christophe de Margerie’ Arctic LNG tanker. Photographer: Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images Russia’s Yamal LNG, set to be the world’s biggest Arctic producer of liquefied natural gas, plans to send its debut cargo to China as thanks […]

More than half of Alaska’s oil reserve is up for bids

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will be accepting oil exploration bids for more than half of the land on a Northern Alaska petroleum reserve that’s the size of Indiana. The bureau’s announcement on Wednesday is the largest lease sale to be offered in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, according to Alaska’s Energy Desk. A total […]

If Mexico Goes MIA, Permian Gas Could Flame Out

Natural gas spot prices fell to below $3.00 per million British thermal units on Tuesday. United States Natural Gas (ticker: UNG) notched a 0.31% decline so far. The Energy Information Administration is expected to release supply and demand data later this week, which tends to move gas prices on the day, but natural gas and natural gas stock […]

Norway Unfazed By Peak Oil Concerns

When crude oil demand will peak is anyone’s guess. Forecasts vary widely. Wood Mackenzie says that peak demand is “very real,” and sees a decline of 4 million bpd between 2020 and 2035. Other majors including BP and Total SA see peak demand as coming between 2025 and 2040, as a result of clean energy government initiatives, slower economic […]

The ‘sweet spots’ fueling the US shale oil boom ‘will not last forever,’ Saudi Aramco CEO says

Saudi Aramco’s CEO says he does not worry about the booming U.S. shale oil output. The “sweet spots” that American frackers are focusing on will eventually deplete, forcing them to tap less lucrative acreage, Amin Nasser says. Saudi Aramco’s Amin Nasser, CEO of the world’s largest oil company, says he does not spend much time […]

Draining the storage glut

A shift in most oil markets from contango to backwardation is changing the outlook for the global storage business World oil inventories are falling, and the two-year bonanza that handsomely rewarded oil-storage owners may well have run its course. After building through 2014 and 2016, commercial oil inventories in rich countries ended 2016 unchanged from […]

Oil: This Time It’s Different

Summary In this piece, I decided to tackle some recent oil-related data that shows a continued recovery in the market. Prices aren’t responding, but the underlying data suggests the recovery in the market now is real. I anticipate further improvements moving forward that will prove bullish for oil investors. Another week, another set of mostly […]

Oil Quality Issues Could Bankrupt Venezuela

The next few weeks for Venezuela will be crucial, as it could struggle to meet a huge stack of debt payments. Reports that the nation’s oil production is experiencing deteriorating quality raises a new cause for concern for the crumbling South American nation. Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA is reportedly shipping crude oil with growing […]

Texas’ shale oil boom yields rags-to-riches tales by the barrel

In the dusty heart of West Texas, rows of tall white wind turbines and rust-colored working pump jacks bob up and down along the vast rugged landscape. It’s a visual juggernaut but make no mistake – this is shale country and in this part of the Lone Star State, legends are born and billions are […]

Oil’s Biggest Rigs Head to the Junkyard

Transocean Ltd. is finally sending Pathfinder to its grave, after two years in a Caribbean purgatory that cost about $15,000 a day. The move by the world’s biggest offshore-rig operator signals just how bleak the future looks for deepwater drilling. Pathfinder is the most famous of six floating rigs the company is scrapping in burials […]

Oil Prices Buoyed by Middle East Tensions

Oil prices traded higher Wednesday, supported by ongoing political tensions in the Middle East. Brent crude, the global benchmark, was up 0.76%, at $58.32 a barrel on London’s Intercontinental Exchange. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate futures were trading up 0.31%, at $52.04 a barrel. “There are no prizes for guessing the […]

Recent Production: Colombia, Mexico and Brazil

Colombia Colombia production is holding a plateau over the past year after a large decline in the last part of 2015 and first half of 2016. August value was 858 kbpd (down 0.04% y-o-y). Colombia oil reserves at the end of 2016 were 1.66 Gb (down 16.8% from 2 Gb in 2015 which followed a […]

Machine over Man

Gone are the days when manual labour drove the bulk of the work in oil and gas exploration. In a post-peak-oil era, in which resources are harder to extract and oil prices continue to plunge, the race towards automation means higher profitability — and less human error. Out on the oil patch, opportunity comes to […]

Saudi Arabia curbs oil exports to combat glut

Saudi Arabia is allocating fewer barrels of crude for export next month and at a level below current demand, emphasising the effort by global producers to reduce surplus inventories. In a rare statement, the Ministry of Energy on Monday said contracted demand for Saudi crude for November was 7.7m barrels a day, but the kingdom […]

A little on the Profitability of the Bakken

In the first part of this post I present an update on the profitability for Light Tight Oil (LTO) extraction in the Bakken (ND) as one big project. This is followed with economic life cycle analysis for the average LTO well of the 2014, 2015 and 2016 vintages in the Bakken. This analysis found that […]

Where The US Exports Oil And Petroleum Products

This year the U.S. has averaged more than 900,000 barrels per day (BPD) of crude oil exports while continuing to import an average of 8.1 million BPD. In the previous article, I discussed the reasons the U.S. exports oil, despite the fact that we are still a significant net importer of crude oil. In a nutshell, the […]

US Shale Juggernaut Shows Signs of Fatigue

American shale companies are starting to tap the brakes on drilling. U.S. oil output remains robust and may still surpass the record annual average of 9.6 million barrels a day, set in 1970. But companies, confronting technological, operational and financial obstacles, are starting to ease up on drilling. The pace of innovation that allowed shale […]

The oilsands at 50: How much life is left in the resource?

On Sept. 30, 1967, the Great Canadian Oil Sands facility opened north of Fort McMurray, Alta., with much fanfare, bunting and speeches by politicians. It was the first large-scale commercial operation of the oilsands, and the result of a gamble taken by Philadelphia’s Sun Oil and its chief executive, J. Howard Pew, and by 100,000 Alberta households […]

It’s Been A Tough Week For Peak Oil Theorists

In news that is certain to upset adherents to the never-dying cult of Peak Oil, IHS Markit released a study on Sept. 25 indicating that, per their analysis of data from more than 440,000 oil wells in the Permian Basin, the basin still has somewhere between 60 and 70 billion barrels of producible oil to give […]

Africa’s Richest Man: Oil Is Not The Way Forward

The richest man in Africa says crude oil prices would do Nigeria a favor if they stay lower for longer. Last week at the UN General Assembly, Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, whose main business is in cement but also holds interests in agricultural commodities and petrochemicals, said that agriculture – not crude oil – is […]

Daniel Yergin talks oilsands past, present and future

Daniel Yergin has made a career out of making sense of the big trends sweeping through the dynamic universe of international oil and natural gas development. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his seminal book about the energy sector, The Prize, Yergin is also vice-chairman of IHS Markit, as well as a prominent energy […]

Opec has lost its crown as world’s top oil player

It’s happy days for Opec, but once the whoops die down, the group should take a long hard look at itself. Because it has lost its crown as the world’s top oil player. Shale billionaire Harold Hamm told Bloomberg TV on Friday that forecasts of US oil production growth are way too optimistic and are […]

Shale Billionaire Hamm Slams ‘Exaggerated’ U.S. Oil Projections

Billionaire oilman Harold Hamm says the government was way too optimistic with its prediction of more than 1 million new barrels a day in U.S. production, and the snafu is “distorting” global crude prices. This year’s rise is likely to be closer to about 500,000 barrels, far off an initial forecast by the U.S. Energy […]

Russia Remains Open to Longer OPEC Cuts, While Mulling Exit Plan

Russia signaled that it would be willing to prolong the production cuts it agreed with OPEC beyond the first quarter of next year if needed, while also making clear its commitment to the deal wasn’t open ended. It was too early to talk about the specific details of extending the oil-output pact at a meeting […]

After Harvey, What Will Happen to Houston’s Oil Industry?

This story originally appeared on CityLab and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. During this year’s record-breaking hurricane season, oil rigs and refineries were just as exposed as any structure on the precarious Gulf Coast, and their owners were limited to the same options as everyone else: evacuate, prepare, and hope the storm was merciful. The devastation Harvey […]

US shale oil reaching 10 million barrels per day is fiction

Any financial advisor worth their salt will caution you that past performance is not a guarantee of the same in the future. And so it is with US shale oil. Recent EIA estimates claim potential production of up to 10 million barrels per day (BPD). That projection is pure fiction and in this article I […]

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