Tech Talk – more on volcanoes, peak oil and slow transitions

Many news agencies are following the slow inundation of the Hawaiian town of Pahoa, as lava from Kilauea inches into the small town at the rate of around 15 ft an hour. It is a slow death to parts of the community since the lava started moving in June and the flow has travelled over […]

Russian oil: Between a rock and a hard place

One of Russia’s most powerful men stood on stage at New York’s St Regis Hotel with a conciliatory message for America. “The relationship between the US and Russia has been severely hampered by historical stereotypes,” said Igor Sechin, a former Soviet intelligence officer and now the dominant force in the Russian energy industry. “But we […]

Growth in Global Total Debt sustained a High Oil Price and delayed the Bakken “Red Queen”

The saying is that hindsight (always) provides 20/20 vision. In this post I present a retrospective look at my prediction from 2012 published on The Oil Drum (The “Red Queen” series) where I predicted that Light Tight Oil (LTO) extraction from Bakken in North Dakota would not move much above 0.7 Mb/d. Profitable drilling in […]

Dubious Assumptions Underpin Latest ‘Peak Oil’ Anti-Fracking Report

David Hughes, a Canadian geoscientist and a fellow of the anti-fracking Post Carbon Institute, has emerged as one of the media’s favorite proponents of “Peak Oil,” the debunked theory that oil production will soon be in permanent decline. Never mind, of course, that there are more proven oil reserves today than there were decades ago, […]

Enhanced Oil Recovery: Can Chemical EOR Take Off?

Can Chemical EOR Take Off? Enhanced Oil Recovery: Prospects for CO2-based EOR In the second of three articles on enhanced oil recovery, research firm Visiongain looks at the prospects for chemical EOR, outlining why the least prominent of the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods is beginning to see significant growth. Chemical EOR: A Checkered History […]

A reality check on U.S. Government forecasts for a lasting tight oil & shale gas boom

Drilling Deeper reviews the twelve shale plays that account for 82% of the tight oil production and 88% of the shale gas production in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) reference case forecasts through 2040. It utilizes all available production data for the plays analyzed, and assesses historical production, well- and field-decline […]

World Crude Oil Production and the Oil Price

In April 2012 I published this post about World Crude Oil Production and the Oil Price (in Norwegian) which was an attempt to describe the developments in the sources of crude oils (including condensates), tranches of total life cycle costs (that is [CAPEX {inclusive returns} + OPEX] per barrel of oil) and something about the […]

Post Carbon Institute’s LTO Reality Check

The Post Carbon Institute has just released a critique of the EIA’s Light Tight Oil projections. It is titled DRILLING DEEPER. The report is highly critical of the EIA’s projections and should be read by everyone interested in Peak Oil. All data on all charts is in million barrels per day unless otherwise specified. First […]

Saudi Arabia Cuts Oil Supply

The amount of oil Saudi Arabia supplied to markets fell last month, according to a person familiar with the country’s oil policy. Its production climbed. The world’s biggest crude exporter supplied 9.36 million barrels a day last month, a reduction of 328,000 barrels daily from August, according to the person, who asked not to be […]

One Third of North Dakota’s Natural Gas is Flared

According to the Energy Information Administration “about one-third of the natural gas North Dakota has produced in recent years has been flared rather than sold to customers or consumed on-site.” Meaning, that 33% of all of the natural gas in North Dakota is being burnt rather than collected. I’m guessing that 33% is not being […]

Bakken Oil Production by County

North Dakota production by county is posted here: ND Historical Barrels of Oil Produced by County Confidential wells are not included in that data however but that estimated data can be found here:Monthly Production Report Index Click on the latest month. This is a zero based chart and gives a better overall picture of production from each […]

World Crude Oil Production and the Oil Price

In April 2012 I published this post about World Crude Oil Production and the Oil Price (in Norwegian) which was an attempt to describe the developments in the sources of crude oils (including condensates), tranches of total life cycle costs (that is [CAPEX {inclusive returns} + OPEX] per barrel  of oil) and something about the […]

Oil’s crash threatens to derail booming Alberta

“The biggest negative impact is the cutback in production in the three oil rich provinces, Alberta, Newfoundland and Saskatchewan,” Guatieri said. “Which means their economies will take a bigger hit than the national economy.” Those economies have been economic leaders over last couple of years, said Guatieri, with Alberta and Saskatchewan pumping out jobs and […]

No End in Sight for US Oil Production Boom

Falling oil and gasoline prices have sent oil company stocks tumbling, but oil experts say the boom in American energy production shows no signs of slowing down, keeping the market flush with crude and gasoline prices low. Even after a drop of as much as 25 percent in oil prices since early summer, several government […]

Saudi oil pipeline briefly set alight after shots fired at patrol

A “limited fire” broke out on a subsidiary oil pipeline in eastern Saudi Arabia on Saturday after assailants fired shots at a security patrol, the state news agency SPA said. SPA, citing the spokesman for police in Eastern Province, said authorities were at the scene quickly and had put out the fire. It said the […]

Saudi, Kuwait Seen Curbing Oil Output at ‘Opportune Time’

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait halted production at a jointly run oil field late this week, a move that could help ease a supply glut that has pushed global prices down 25 percent. The 300,000-barrel-a-day Khafji field, located in the neutral zone between the two countries, was being shut because of environmental concerns, a person familiar […]

BP To Restart North Sea Gas Field Half-Owned By Iran

BP will restart the Rhum gas field in the UK North Sea, half-owned by Iran’s National Oil Company, four years after the field was shut down due to Western sanctions, a BP spokesman said on Friday. Production from the field, which supplied 4 percent to 5 percent of Britain’s demand before its shutdown, is expected […]

Oil’s crash threatens to derail booming Alberta – and Canada too

Like most other regions of the country, gas prices around the Greater Toronto Area are in a nosedive, hovering around $1.17 a litre on Thursday or two pennies cheaper than earlier in the week. Across the country in Calgary, gas is even cheaper with some stations selling car fuel for $1.06. Morning commuters who slog into both cities […]

Fracking Moves To China

Link to Part 1 Last week on Sea Change Radio, we learned about the new shale gas boom in China. This week, in the second part of my discussion with Jaeah Lee and James West of Mother Jones, we examine the larger questions that surround this shift in Chinese energy policy. Can natural gas be […]

Oil Slide Puts Venezuela Projects Under Pressure

The recent slide in global oil prices puts projects under heavy pressure, executives at two major production companies told an industry conference in Venezuela on Wednesday. A four-month rout, which stemmed from signs of lower growth and oil demand in Europe coupled with expectations that OPEC’s core Gulf members are in no hurry to cut […]

Saudi Arabia Still Calling the Shots

The US Shale Oil Boom There have been a lot of stories over the past few years about the implications of the US shale boom. To review for those who might have been living in a cave for the past 5 years, the marriage of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has reversed 40 years […]

One Of The World’s Biggest Oil Projects Is A Total Fiasco

REUTERS/Anatoly UstinenkoAn aerial view shows artificial islands on Kashagan offshore oil field in the Caspian sea, western Kazakhstan, April 7, 2013. Picture taken April 7, 2013. WHEN it was discovered in 2000, the Kashagan oilfield in Kazakhstan’s waters in the northern Caspian Sea was the world’s biggest oil find in three decades. By now it […]

World War III: It’s here and energy is largely behind it

I’ve been advancing a thesis for several months with friends that World War III is now underway. It’s just that it’s not the war we thought it would be, that is, a confrontation between major powers with the possibility of a nuclear exchange. Instead, we are getting a set of low-intensity, on-again, off-again conflicts involving […]

An Energy Revolution in Our Midst

Anyone who doubts that the deployment of the technologies we have come to call fracking constitutes a revolution should consider this. U.S. oil production has soared by 70 percent in the past six years. American refineries have cut in half their imports from the OPEC cartel, setting off a scramble by those countries to find […]

Libya to Produce Million Barrels of Oil a Day This Month

Libya’s crude output will soon reach one million barrels a day after ports and fields reopened, a lawmaker said, adding the government is fully in control of its oil industry. The news comes as oil markets have been rattled by increasing production in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Speaking to The Wall Street […]

Keystone Be Darned: Canada Finds Oil Route Around Obama

So you’re the Canadian oil industry and you do what you think is a great thing by developing a mother lode of heavy crude beneath the forests and muskeg of northern Alberta. The plan is to send it clear to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast via a pipeline called Keystone XL. Just a few […]

‘Sweet Spot’ Technology Could Cut Fracking 30-50%

An entrepreneur with roots in coalbed methane and his company are seeking collaborators to further test a technology that detects, identifies and quantifies hydrocarbons in shale oil and gas wells. Laramie, WY-based WellDog has been working with Royal Dutch Shell plc to adapt for shale oil and gas applications WellDog’s Raman spectroscopy technology, which it […]

The Tar Sands Bubble

The Canadian tar sands industry has seen better days. Energy giant Statoil announced last week that it would postpone a major mining project in Alberta for at least three years. It was just the latest in a string of major setbacks for tar sands oil, which has become nearly as bad for corporate profits as […]

Uganda: Dangers of fracking

As I previously predicted Uganda has now found a substantial reservoir of natural gas and the government will be looking at a development plan to fully utilise such a find.  Therefore It now seems a good time to return to the controversial issue of fracking. In the UK, the North Sea natural gas reserves are […]

US poised to become world’s leading liquid petroleum producer

The US is overtaking Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer of liquid petroleum, in a sign of how its booming oil production has reshaped the energy sector. US production of oil and related liquids such as ethane and propane was neck-and-neck with Saudi Arabia in June and again in August at about 11.5m barrels […]

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