Oil Glut Worsens as OPEC Market-Share Battle Just Beginning

A global oil glut is building as OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia pumps near record highs in an attempt to win a market-share battle against stubbornly resistant U.S. shale production, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday. The West’s energy watchdog said in a monthly report that although higher-than-expected oil demand was helping to ease […]

Saudi Arabia boosts OPEC Oil Output

Saudi Arabia boosted crude oil production for a second month to the highest level in at least three decades, helping to raise OPEC output as U.S. supply growth showed signs of slowing. The Middle Eastern country increased daily crude output by 13,700 barrels in April to an average of 10.308 million, according to data the […]

Oil output at Bakken and Eagle Ford starts a descent

EIA report shows forecast for shale oil output fall in June Oil production from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale plays look like they’ve peaked and other shale plays may not be far behind. Oil production from seven major U.S. shale plays is expected to fall by a total of 86,000 barrels a day in […]

U.S. Approves Shell’s Plan to Drill in Arctic

Royal Dutch Shell’s return to oil drilling in the U.S. Arctic for the first time since 2012 took a big step forward on Monday when the Obama administration approved the company’s exploration plan. The Department of Interior conditionally approved Shell’s plan to explore for oil in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska. Shell has already spent […]

Fracking and sex

When I think of extracting natural gas from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, I don’t think of sex, sexually transmitted disease or chlamydia. When it comes to hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking, the only question springing to mind is: When will I be able to ditch heating oil for gas so I don’t go broke each winter? […]

America’s Oil Drilling Boom Is Sputtering Back to Life

  The oil boom isn’t dead after all. For the first time in five months, a rig in the Williston Basin, where North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation lies, sputtered back to life and started drilling for crude once again. And then one returned to the Permian Basin, the nation’s biggest oil play, field services contractor […]

What the Future of Oil Drilling Will Look Like

The future of the U.S. oil industry may well be taking shape north of this town on 15 square miles of windswept prairie above the Bakken Shale. It’s about as far from the industry’s wildcatting heritage as is thinkable. “Our idea was to build the world’s greatest oil factory,” says Chris Wright, the chief executive […]

The Return Of Peak Oil – Worrying Signs From US And Russia

Since around 2005 many countries have increased their oil production but more have decreased. But the combined production of the United States and Russia have kept the world on a slight uptrend since that time. World oil production jumped in 2011, hardly moved at all in 2013 but it was up by more than 1.5 […]

US shale oil drillers move rigs to more productive areas

In an attempt to increase productivity, shale oil drillers in the United States have begun moving rigs to more productive areas of the Permian and Eagle Ford basins, analysts at Goldman Sachs said. Data from oil services firm Baker Hughes Inc showed on Friday that the fall in U.S. oil rig count slowed last week, […]

Russian oil production remains at post-Soviet high

Russian oil and gas condensate production, among the world’s largest, remained at a post-Soviet record level of 10.71 million barrels per day in April, underpinned by a recent recovery in oil prices, Energy Ministry data showed on Saturday. Global oil prices jumped 21 percent in April to over $66 a barrel due to slowing drilling […]

World Oil Yearly Production Charts

The EIA publishes World C+C Annual Production as part of its International Energy Statistics. The data goes back to 1980 and includes OPEC countries as well as Non-OPEC. I have plotted annual production for the 37 largest producers plus one titled “Other” which is the sum of all the other small producers not plotted. I have […]

Kjell Aleklett Update: Peak Oil 2015-2016

What happened to peak oil? Here an older 2012 video from Swedish peak oil luminary and ASPO chairman Kjell Aleklett. At the time, when we started this blog, we were entirely in the Richard Heinberg mode of thinking, summarized as: ‘industrial society is going to be hit very soon by a truck, that few see […]

Bakken, What Is The Data Telling Us?

North Dakota publishes, every month, a Monthly Statistical Update from which we can gather a wealth of data if we dig deep enough. They publish the number of spuds, that in new wells started, each month, along with the average number of rigs that month. From this we can glean the average number of days each […]

The U.S. Production Decline Has Begun

The U.S. oil production decline has begun. It is not because of decreased rig count. It is because cash flow at current oil prices is too low to complete most wells being drilled. The implications are profound. Production will decline by several hundred thousand of barrels per day before the effect of reduced rig count is […]

Marcellus Production Outlook

Has Well Productivity Peaked in the Nation’s Largest Shale Gas Play? The Marcellus shale gas play of Pennsylvania and West Virginia came onto the scene in 2007 in a big way and has grown to become the nation’s largest. It has accounted for much of the growth of U.S. shale gas production, and made up […]

EIA projections indicate US becoming a net exporter of natural gas

In its recently released annual energy outlook (AEO2015), EIA expects the US to be a net natural gas exporter by 2017. After 2017, natural gas trade is expected to be driven largely by the availability of natural gas resources and by world energy prices. Increased availability of domestic gas or higher world energy prices each increase […]

Saudi Arabia: the great oil game

Saudi Arabia just increased oil production to a record level, never reached in previous history. They are doing that in a moment of record low oil prices. What do they have in mind? (Image from Arthur Berman) When the collapse of the oil prices started, in the summer of 2014, everyone noticed that Saudi Arabia […]

US to launch blitz of gas exports

The United States is poised to flood world markets with once-unthinkable quantities of liquefied natural gas as soon as this year, profoundly changing the geo-politics of global energy and posing a major threat to Russian gas dominance in Europe. “We anticipate becoming big players, and I think we’ll have a big impact,” said the Ernest […]

Latest from Iran

Iran’s gas exports have increased by more than one million cubic meters (mcm) during the first 11 months of the previous Iranian calendar year (ended March 20, 2015) compared to the corresponding period a year before. According to Petroleum Ministry’s SHANA news agency, the country exported 26.8 mcm natural gas during the aforesaid period. The […]

Saudi Arabia’s solution to global oil glut: Pump even more crude

Saudi Arabia has a response to the global surplus of oil: Raise output to near-record levels, and then pump even more. The world’s biggest oil exporter, having abandoned last year its role of keeping global markets in balance, now has incentive to maximize output and undermine rival producers by using its reserve capacity, according to […]

Thirty thousand square kilometers of land lost to oil and gas development

All across North America, patches of land are being taken over by the rigs, roads, and storage facilities of thousands of oil and gas drilling operations. Now, for the first time, a study tallies up the land area they consume: 30,000 square kilometers—an area equivalent to three Yellowstone National Parks. “For all intents and purposes, […]

OPEC, Tight Oil and Russia

The OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with OPEC crude only production numbers for March 2015. OPEC production was up 812,000 barrels per day. The increase came primarily from three countries: Saudi Arabia was up 347,000 barrels per day to 10,010,000 bpd. Iraq was up 319,000 bpd to 3,625,000 barrels per day. And Libya was […]

What Happens To US Shale When The Easy Money Runs Out?

Today we will take a look at both Whiting Petroleum (WLL) and Continental Resources (CLR) as far as their Bakken economics. Overall the numbers will show that, despite claims of low cash costs per MBOE ($16 or so for CLR) and high IRRs on $60 WTI, the facts say otherwise. In addition, the analysis will […]

Iraq Oil Output Growth Slow

Growth in Iraq’s oil production capacity may slow as lower crude prices hurt the ability of OPEC’s number two producer to pay international oil companies for work there, officials from BP Plc and OAO Lukoil said.Lukoil sees a “significant reduction” in the growth rate of Iraqi output capacity in 2016 and 2017 due to the […]

Pemex prepares to expand oil production

Oil production at Pemex has touched bottom after a decade of decline, according to the head of exploration and production at Mexico’s state-controlled energy group, and a new era of deals with private companies should fuel its recovery. “Things are looking good,” Gustavo Hernández told the Financial Times in an interview, just weeks before the […]

Oil Rigs’ Biggest Risk: Human Error

In a third-floor room of an office building here, a cluster of equipment mounted with dials, wheels and screens mimics the controls of a deep-water oil rig so workers can practice reacting to dangerous situations. BP PLC set up the drilling simulator at its campus two years ago and designed a program that not only […]

Slight Production Declines Hide Bigger Oil Storage Issues

Storage Builds Everyone this week focused on the slight production declines that this was a sign to go long oil, but what seemed to go under the radar was another build in both Cushing and the Gulf Coast storage hubs. Cushing added another 1.3 million barrels to weekly storage and stands at 61.5 million barrels. […]

Saudi Arabia Oil Output Rises To Highest In 30 Years As US Output Levels Of

Saudi Arabian oil production has increased to its highest level in three decades, just as U.S. output is expected to drop from its 30-year high. Fearing a loss of global market share, the oil-rich kingdom has kept its crude oil spigots open despite a U.S. oil boom that’s contributed to a glut driving prices to about […]

Unconventional but normal

WHEN the oil price crashed last year, many assumed that the earliest casualties would be the small, nimble American companies that specialise in getting “unconventional” oil out of shale, tar-coated sand and the like. After all, with their high production costs and heavy debts, these firms were inherently more vulnerable to price shocks than big […]

Saudi Arabia Adds Half a Bakken to Oil Market in a Month

Saudi Arabia boosted crude production to the highest in three decades in March, with a surge equal to half the daily output of the Bakken formation in North Dakota. The kingdom boosted daily crude output by 658,800 barrels in March to an average of 10.294 million, according to data the country communicated to the Organization […]

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